SCIENCE FANTASY IN TELEVISION, CINEMA AND COMICS
creator
interviewed
DOUG
TRUMBULL
on CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS
MESSAGE
FROM SPACE
review
SILENT
RUNNING
DALEK INDEX
SUPERMAN
2
ICIENCE FANTASY IN TELEVISION, CINEMA AND COMICS
Nation of the Daleks 4
Terry Nation, creator of such sf concepts as The Daleks. Blake's 7 and The Survivors, talks
to Starburst about his career in this exclusive interview
Marvel SF Comics Index 12
A complete index to all the movies and tv series that Marvel have adapted to the comic strip
format, from Planet of the Apes to Battlestar Galactica.
Superman: The Review 14
After the look at the making of the movie last issue. Starburst casts a critical eye over the
finished product as it goes into national distribution.
Starburst Letters 19
The comments and criticisms on Starburst 4 are just beginning to drift into the editorial
offices. See if yours is amongst this collection.
Message from Space Review 20
Enter the Dragon meets Star Wars in this spectacular new film from Japan’s Toei Studios.
Message from Space Poster .....24
Our bonus 16^ x 1 1 j full colour reproduction of the original Japanese poster.
Douglas Trumbull Interview: Part II 26
In the second part of this mammoth exclusive interview. Douglas Trumbull talks to Starburst
about the magnificent special effects on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Things to Come 32
Our monthly look at what is new and what is upcoming in the world of tv and cinema sf.
Silent Running 38
Starburst presents a review of this classic sf movie which marked Douglas Trumbull’s debut
as a director.
Book World 42
Our monthly critical appraisal of the many sf books that are currently on release.
The First Annual Fantasy Film Convention 44
A full colour pictorial review of the Fantasy Film Convention, held in London in October 1978,
including photos of all the famous sf names who attended.
I t's now over twelve months since
Star Wars opened in nritaiii. creat-
ing a veritable deluge of sf product
onto the market.
Sceptics said it was a passing phase,
but this issue we've got 48 pages
worth of proof to the contrary.
Science fiction movies and tv shows
are still flourishing the world over.
Truth to say, many projects had been
under way Iwforc Star Wars opened,
though they've all received a boost in
faith and (more important) budget over
the last year.
This issue goes a long way to show
the world-wide acceptance of media sf
through its international coverage. . .
We've got Message From Space
(Japan) Superman the movie (USA),
our own popular Dr Who and Blake’s
7 (which should be starting its latest
tv season around the lime you read this),
plus coverage of Britain's (irst-ever
f antasy f ilm Convention.
Things to Conw is once more brim-
ing over with news on future projects,
while, to balance things out, we also
look back to an sf classic. Silent
Running, complementing the second
part of our DougTrumbull interview.
Next month's issue will he a dream for
special etf'ecis fans as we cover t rum-
buM's new effects concept, and inter-
view the men behind Superman
The Movie. Until then,
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page 20
page 44
Vol1,No6 Jan. 1979
Edited and designed by Dez Skinn
Associate Editor: Alan McKenzie
Art Editor: Stewart Orr
Art Assistance: Elitta Fell
Chas Farnsbarns
Advertising : Top Team
Production Assistance: Eleanor
Finnegan
Distribution : Comag
The Siagbugst Interview
TERRY NATION
-creator-writer of BLAKE'S 7, The DALEKS and The SURVIVORS
T ern- Nation b best-known for his fantasy
writing: as creator of the Daleks and now
Blake’s 7. But it wasn't always that way.
He originally wanted to get up on a stage and
be laughed at.
Bom in Cardiff. Wales, he grew up during
World War II. His father was away in the army
and his mother was an air-raid warden, so there
were times when he would sit alone in the air-raid
shelter as German planes bombed Cardiff. He
says he believes in the only child syndrome:
“foing an only child (as he was), you have to
invent your own persona and your own stories.”
As for other influences, he says: "I grew up with
a marvellous radio service that had a thing called
Children’s Hour. I read early. And I also grew
up in the front row of the local Odeon.”
He started his working life at eighteen, as a
commercial traveller for the family furniture
factory'. But, aged 25, he gave up this career and
moved to London with hopes of becoming a stage
comedian. These hopes were dashed. As he says,
“to play your best joke and receive back absolute
silence is pretty devastating”. Eventually, a
talent broker told him: “Son, the jokes are funny
— it’s you that's not.” If there is a turning-point
in Terry Nation's life, then that was it.
Fortunately, he met comedian Spike Milligan
who saw Nation was starving, gave him £10 and
commissioned him to write a Goon Show script.
At the time Milligan ran a talent agency which
included Ray Galton, Alan Simpson, Eric Sykes
and Johnny Speight. It was a small world and
Nation’s successful comedy script led to writing
work for such comedians as Peter Sellers, Ted
Ray, Harry Worth, Frankie Howerd and Tony
Hancock. His radio work included All My Eye,
Idiot Weekly, The Jimmy Logan Show, Val
Parnell's Startime and the Elsie and Doris
Waters’ Floggits series. In all, he wrote more
than 200 radio comedy shows. But, by that time,
he had decided his comedy writing “wasn't really
very good”.
^ he turned down the chance to write four tv
episodes of The Army Game (ironically starring
the first Dr.Who, W illiam Hartnell). Instead, he
took time out to write an entire comedy play for
tv’s Unde Selwyn. This led to three scripts for
the ITV sf series Out of This Worfd(.\9fi). He
adapted Philip K. Dick's Impostor, Clifford
Simak’s Immigrant and wroteanoriginalscreen-
play Botany Bay,
He then returned to comedy, writing for a
Tony Hancock stage show in Nottingham: “I
leapt at it because he was the greatest comic in
Interview conducted by John Fleming
What did you think when you heard about
Dr Who for the first time ?
1 didn't have any confidence in the series.
I read the brochure at the briefing and said,
“There’s no way this show can ever
succeed.” And I don’t think it could have
done if it had followed the route that they
had planned for it.
What was that?
That it actually went into historical situa-
tions and was reasonably educational. That
was the direction the BBC wanted to take
and Sidney Newman (BBC tv’s Head of
Drama) was bitterly opposed to any bug-
eyed monsters. We could go into the future,
but it had to have a relatively scientific base
and it was going to be 'good solid stuff’. He
violently objected to the Daleks when he
saw them on the script. It was only the
determination of the producer Verity
Lambert that got them on. Or maybe it was
the fact that the BBC had to go on. They’d
had them built and they’d spent so much
“The Daleks represent govern-
ment, officialdom, that un-
hearing, unthinking, blanked
out face of authority that will
destroy you.”
money they had to go on. Nobody had
faith in them, including myself.
How did you originally visualise the Daleks?
I knew that I didn’t want them to be men
dressed up. That was my first personal
the world”. At which point, “the BBC came up
with this idea for this crazy doctor who travelled
through time and space. They called my agent,
my agent called me, Hancock said Don't write
for flippin’ kids and I told my agent to turn it
down.” Luckily, Hancock and Nation had a
“dispute”, parted company and Nation agreed
to work on Dr Who. But then Erk Sykes offered
him a comedy writing assignment in Sweden, so
he wrote the seven episodes of the first Dalek
story (The Dead Planet) in seven days and left to
join Sykes.
Dr Who first appeared on screen in 1963.
W ithin three weeks, it was drawing the largest
audience for its time-slot in BBC history. After
a four-part introductory story. The Dead Planet
introduced the Daleks. In 1965, Dalek
merchandising (toys etc) reportedly earned
Nation £50,000. The Dr Who and the Daleks
feature film (1965) reportedly brought him in
£300,000. .\nd Daleks — Invasion Earth 2150
AD followed in 1966. By 1977, the Daleks were
still one of the lop four tv toys and their creator
vvas reportedly earning £40,000 a year from
scripts. The Daleks were only a small part of his
output.
He wrote a dozen scripts (more than anyone
else) for the original Saint tv scries. That success
led to a job as Script Editor and writer on The
Aaron series. He also w rote for The Champions,
was Script Editor on The Avengers (the series
co-starring Linda Thorson), was Script Editor
and .\ssociale Producer on The Persuaders,
created Survivors and created Blake’s 7.
Starburst met Terry Nation at Imidon’s
Reform Club in Pall Mall (the base for Jules
Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days) and they
talked about the world which Nation has created.
brief. I had seen the Georgian State
Dancers — the girls who move with long
skirts and appear not to move— they just
glide. That was the kind of image I wanted
to get. I knew what the voice would sound
like, because it had to be mechanical and
broken down into syllables all the time. I
made a few mistakes.
Such as ?
The hands. They became enormously
cumbersome. I made a few mistakes about
being able to go up stairs and things of that
sort. I made the cardinal mistake of killing
them off at the end of the first series, which
had to be rectified. But what actually
happened with the BBC was that episode
one of The Dead Planet came up. It was
quite a good eerie beginning and, at the end
5
The first Dalek story of the entire Doctor Who series. The original Doctor (William Hartnell)
comes face-to-face with his metal adversaries.
of it — the last frame of the picture — we saw
a bit of a Dalek. We didn’t see a whole
Dalek. And the phones started to ring.
People saying, ’’Christ, what is that thing?”
A week later the Dalek appeared. And a
week after that the mail started to arrive.
And then it mushroomed. As a writer, you
are a very anonymous figure. Nobody
notices your name on the screen. And, for
the first time in my life, I started to get mail.
It wasn’t just a couple of letters; it was
thousands of letters. They were coming by
“I went to the United States
in 1965 and said I wanted to
make a series called The
Daleks.”
the sackload. So f twigged I had something
going for me here: something was happen-
ing. And of course the BBC twigged it as
well and they knew they had to change the
direction that Dr Who was intended to go
in. So a lot of the stuff they had prepared
was put aside and they went much more
into the sf area. And I think that actually
established the ultimate pattern of where it
was going.
The series has never really caught on in
America. Why do you think that is?
It’s played now in syndication.
But the networks were never really interested,
were they?
No, well how could they be with the quality
of the production? There was always a
certain sort of Englishness about it. It was
very much a domestic product, I think. I
went to the United States (in l%S) and said
I wanted to make a series called The Daleks.
I went there to hustle and got very close to
doing it.
What sort of series would it have been?
There would have been no Dr Who because
I had no copyright on the Doctor character.
But I could take the Daleks away and do it.
I might have to pay the BBC something for
their interest in the design, but they’re my
characters. Indeed, the BBC was going to go
with me on this series at one point. But they
weren’t — at the time — a very good business
“My favourite character in
Dr Who was Davros: The
man in the wheelchair who
was actually perpetuating his
image in his machines.”
organisation. And the whole thing sort of
crumbled to dust. And then I’d moved on
to something else : I think I’d gone on to The
Saint. And from there I went on to The
Baron and on to The Avengers and straight
on to The Persuaders. And each one of these
is a big block of your life. There was never
time. Hence, when the BBC wanted the
Daleks again, I wasn’t available to write
them. So other people wrote those episodes
but they never understood the nature of the
Daleks as well as I did.
So what is the nature of the Daleks? You
must have based them on a real person or a
number of real people, did you ?
I can’t isolate one character. But I suppose
you could say the Nazis. The one recurring
dream I have — once or twice a year it comes
to me — is that I’m driving a car very quickly
and the windscreen is a bit murky. The sun
comes onto it and it becomes totally opaque.
I’m still hurtling forward at incredible speed
and there’s nothing I can sec or do and I
can’t stop the car. That’s my recurring night-
mare and it’s very simply solved by
psychologists who say you’re heading for
your future. You don’t know what your
future is. However much you plead with
somebody to save you from this situation,
everybody you turn to turns out to be of
’Them’. And there’s nobody left — You ate
the lone guy.
The Daleks are all of ‘Them’ and they
represent for so many people so many
different things, but they all see them as
government, as officialdom, as that unhear-
ing, unthinking, blanked-out face of
6
authority that will destroy you because it
wants to destroy you. I believe in that now :
I’ve directed them more in that way over the
years.
Presumably by writing about the future, by
creating your own future, you're making
what lies at the end of the road, at the other
side of the windscreen, less frightening
because it's less unknown and because you're
controlling it.
Yes. I mean. Dr Who always comes out of
it alive, however bad the problem. The good
guys, if they don't win exclusively, at least
“In this country, if I write a
novel, I am instantly dismissed
as being a television writer."
come out winning that particular round of
the war. Dr Who doesn’t win the war, but
he wins a battle.
You once said all your writing was about
survival.
Yes, >vell it’s a theme that’s actually gone
through my work enormously. I see mine-
fields all around me : I ’m not that confident .
I’ve been going back and forth from London
to Geneva (working on a new project) and it
may be like Walter Mitty but I’m in that
aeroplane and I’m waiting for the moment
when they say, “Can anybody fly this aero-
plane?’’ And / can’t but I know that finally
I'm going to be the one who ha.s to do it.
There is menace all around you. It’s a fairly
dark world out there. It doesn’t infringe very
much on my personal life, but when I listen
to any news broadcast I think, “God! I
might be living in Beirut. I could be one of
those people in Beirut being shelled every
day of my life." As a wartime child, I grew
up when bombs were dropping and men
actually were trying to kill me— not
personally, but they wouldn’t mind if they
killed me.
Your Genesis of the Daleks story for Dr Who
has come astonishingly surrealistic scenes in
it. Dr Who falling down a cliff, the girl with
her foot trapped in the railway line, genetic
experiments, gas battles.
My favourite character in a Ur Who series
in year was Davros: the man in the wheel-
chair who was actually perpetuating his
image in his machines. He was a creator.
“You are made in your creator’s image.’’
That’s what I wanted to do. I think it was a
smashing set of episodes. I loved them.
David Maloney directed it (he also directed
some Blake’s 7 episodes) and he found pro-
duction values they hadn’t had there for
ages. It seems to me if you have to say.
“What’s the best Dr Who series that ever
happened?” from my point of view that
would be it.
And it had that astonishing battlefield.
It was a bizarre World War I battlefield
because, lying alongside the most incredible
space-age gun is an iron hatchet. I think it
was really something I saw as a kid ; a movie
called Things to Come (1935) where every-
body had reverted almost to primitivism,
but they were also building this great space-
ship. The technology had run out ; they were
going back to more and more basic things.
But somewhere in there was a corps elite of
people working who still had their priorities.
I truly believe it is set up that, if it happens
“The Daleks are Mark I. In
Blake’s 7 The Federation is the
Daleks Mark II, if you like.’’
someone presses the button or releases the
virus or whatever, there are areas of elitism
that will be protected until the very last
moment because the future of mankind is in
the hands of these elements. And (in Genesis
of the Daleks) Davros’ force was called The
Elite.
That brings us to your TV series Survivors.
It was more serious than, say. Dr Who.
Oh, very much more. I was very committed
to that series and still am very concerned
about our increasing reliance on technology.
In Survivors I was trying to say “Here am I,
7
a man of the generation that landed men on
the moon, and F don't know how to make
an iron axe-head”. Thai's what concerned
me. There’s nothing in my house that is the
exclusive product of one man. I mean, a
matchstick is a huge piece of technology. A
length of line, a piece of thread made of
nylon is an enormous industry. That bothers
me because I think that, at some point, I am
going to be thrown on my own resources by
either world cataclysm or personal cata-
clysm. And I don’t know anything. Tliat’s
the message that Simivors was supposed to
offer.
You wrote the novelisation oj Survivors
yourself— something you didn't do for
Blake’s 7. Why was that?
Because I cared enough. I found it very
tough too. But I wanted to do it my way.
In this country, if I write a novel, I am
instantly dismissed as being a television
writer who has ventured into the rarefied
world of the book writer. 1 sell a lot of copies,
but I really shouldn’t be there. It was
noticed very badly in this country — I mean
very, very few notices took me seriously or
the book seriously. Nobody liked it as a
literary piece. Then it appeared in America,
where I am next-to-unknown as a television
writer, and it was reviewed. A lot of terrible
reviews, but some very good ones. People
took it seriously and were concerned. And
so ‘The Novel’ is somewhere in my future.
The film director Sam Peckinpah was quoted
as saying if he getf 60% of what he wants on
screen, he's a very lucky man.
I would have said he’s been very lucky if
he’s got 60% of what he’s always wanted
to achieve. When BBC2 opened, they did a
big drama series and I did an adaptation of
A Kiss Before Dying, a novel by Ira Levin,
who wrote Rosemary's Baby. I did a good
adaptation of it and it was really quite well
produced for an American subject in
Britain, which we don’t do terribly well.
And I actually sat back and forgot I’d
written it and watched it and enjoyed it.
Very seldom am I able to dissociate myself
until years later. When I watch first time,
I think; "That’s not what I meant ... He
doesn’t look like that” and so on. It is
always frustration. But then you’d go potty
if you really let that get to you. So you live
with it.
Do you 'own' the Daleks?
Yes.
A percentage?
A large percentage of them, yes. The BBC
and I have a deal. Nobody can use the
Daleks without my consent in any situation.
And if they use the Daleks, then I benefit
financially from their use anywhere in the
world. There’s a lovely one— there’s nothing
I can do about it — a new ad (for Rediffusion
TV rentals) that’s running at the moment
with a remote control colour set and the
headline is / Will Obey. 1 think I’ve sort of
put things into the English language now.
I can’t copyright that phrase, but it’s
associated with Daleks. And Exterminate —
I didn’t really invent that (laughs). The
Germans did. I think my big moment of
great happiness was when somebody told
me Dalek was in the new — full— Oxford
Dictionary — You know, the twelve volumes
of obscure words. Dalek apparently is in
there: that pleased me no end.
You're . always reported as not knowing
where you got the word from. Do you ?
No, but I’ll tell you a story that I found
fascinating. Someone in the Daily Mail
dragged it up years ago. Their (ine was
“In the Survivors series I was
trying to say: Here I am, a
man of the generation that
landed a man on the moon,
and I don’t know how to
make an iron axe-head.’’
WHAT DO PRESIDENT TITO AND
TERRY NATION HAVE IN COMMON?
And the answer is nothing, of course.
However, Terry Nation doesn’t know the
meaning of the word Dalek and President
Tito does. Because in Serbo-Croat the word
Dalek means "far and distant things”. Isn’t
that incredible? I found that very, very
strange and bizarre. I don’t meet too many
Serbo-Croats in my regular, daily life.
Blake’s 7 hw.? widely criticised for having
cheap production values.
What can I say?
They looked pretty cheap.
They were. Yes, they were by any standards.
I mean, you have to know the current state
of the BBC. They were the best we could
produce and we have never done less than
our best. But, finally, if you want to buy a
motor car and you can afford a second-
hand 1948 Ford Anglia, that’s what you go
after. So yes, OK, to the buff we are not in
Star Trek’s class, but we attempted more
than Star Trek ever did.
But with no decent budget.
Well, it would have been nice but that
wasn’t possible — it wasn’t achievable — so
you go with what you’ve got.
A von seemed to me to be a far more
attractive and dominant character than
Blake himself.
8
Aaah. He (Paul Darrow) took hold of the
part and made it his own. It could have
been a very dull role, but this particular
actor took hold of it and gave it much
better dimensions than I’d ever put on
paper. He is an enormously popular
character. He is incredibly popular — and
rightly so. He's a good actor. I think he's
terrific. I enjoy watching him all the time.
This is how stars emerge, I suppose: it’s the
actor’s doing.
tVas Blake’s 7 easier to write than Dr Who.’
Presumably because it's longer it's easier to
pace.
Yes. Tempo is vital. Years ago a radio
producer told me that all of drama is
shaped like a ‘W’. You start at a peak, but
“Hammer movies are very
interesting: when they do their
heavy horror sequences, some-
where in there is always the
light relief.”
you can’t ride on that peak all the time
because it’s Just very boring. Hammer
movies are interesting: when they do their
very heavy horror sequences, somewhere in
there is always the light relief.
You also tend to have two or three sub-plots
going on in your series. Not just in Blake but
also in Dr Who.
Always. Always. I maintain it’s the only
way to write those things and they don’t do
it enough. Always my aim in episode one
was split them. Get them all going off in
different directions so the moment whatever
Dr Who was doing was getting dull, or he
was getting to the edge of a precipice, or his
fingers were slipping, then cut to the other
one. Cut to the other one so you’ve got this
intercut situation. I think what’s happened
with the Dr Who series now is that they
haven’t done that enough. I think they tell
one story. They mainline it, following Tom
Baker, and there isn't enough diversion of
secondary and tertiary stories. I did that
(using sub-plots) in Blake all the time.
The centra! idea of Blake's 7 is wildly
subversive, isn't it ?
Well, the Daleks are Mark I. The Federa-
tion is the Daleks Mark II, if you like.
But the audience is asked to identify with
rebels who are going round blowing up
official installations- people who might he
called terrorists.
In a way, yes, you’re absolutely right. But
I disapprove entirely of that kind of
political action. That’s why, in the first
episode, I made The Federation so beastly
and monstrous.
In the Blake episode Bounty, starring the
Irish actor T. P. McKenna, you had a com-
munity which was going to he torn apart by
two internal factions fighting each other.
The Federation's plan was to send in a
supposed 'peace-keeping' force which was,
in fact, an occupying army. That sounds like
you were thinking of a particular, real,
situation. Were you?
Syria. It’s a political device that happens
all the time. That’s what was happening at
the time with Syria. (The Syrians sent a
peace-keeping force into Lebanon.)
You were sneaking in a serious idea.
Yes. But I guarantee that 99.9% of people
in the world who see that show won’t see
any political significance at all. Though,
God knows. I’ve got to get all those people
to relate to some truth, some honour or
some dignity somewhere. It is not just
people tearing around in spaceships,
although that may appear to be what it is.
My Blake is the true figure of good. Do
you know the story of the Last Crusade? —
I think it’s the Third Crusade. All these
guys set off and they were really going to
wipe out these heathens and they got as far
as Venice, I think, and ran out of money,
ran out of boats and a million other things.
And the Venetians said Okay, fellahs, listen.
There's a Christian community over there.
You've got the men and the arms. Go and
wipe out that town and we'll give you the
boats.
So they wiped out the Christian com-
munity so that they could get the boats to
wipe out the heathen community. It’s that
kind of deviousness that I see in The
Federation. They have no regard for Man;
they have regard only for the mechanics of
Man — for that machine. It all works neatly
and efficiently. It doesn’t matter what the
cost in manjKiwer; it’s the final solution.
Get rid of the Jews and the world is going
to be lovely; get rid of the gypsies and the
world is going to be lovely. That metamor-
phosis doesn’t ever work. Finally some-
body has to be on the line that says /, at
least, am honourable and I believe in my
honour. The awful thing for me would be
to find out that that honour is the true evil
— which would be devastating and destroy
my life.
Do you find that people don't treat you
“To the buff we are not in
Star Trek*s class, but we
attempted more than Star Trek
ever did.”
seriously as a writer because you write
'fantasy' ?
Oh, I’m never taken as a serious writer.
That must he frustrating, isn't it? Not
getting credit for hard work.
Well, perhaps. But if you’re a popular
entertainer, then that’s the kind of badge
you carry, I suppose. I don’t mind that too
much. I mean, I have yet to prove that I’ve
got something very valid and good to offer.
I’ve yet to do that. I think I will, because
I’m learning my craft and I’m beginning to
get it right now. I think it will come. I’ve
always believed I’m a late developer, so I
think it’s just taking me longer. My inten-
tion always is to entertain because, if I fail
to do that, I think I've failed to reach an
audience. But within the context of
primarily entertaining, I like to say some
things that I believe are valid and good and
honourable, if you like. I don’t want to use
the medium simply for adventure; I’d like
to educate— Oh! I take that word back! —
But, all right, having said it and retracted it,
you know what I mean.
To intellectually interest ?
(Laughs) I wish I’d said that. But, having
said it, I would never actually let that be
said aloud, in a way. I hope it’s subversive
in that sense. What they must see is a good
entertainment. If it has an additional value,
then terrific. That’s really what I would
like to achieve.
rhe Survivors traces the progress of handful of people who live through a global holocaust. In
•pisode two, "Genesis," Greg (Ian McCulloch), atui Anne (Myra Frances) discover the dead body
if Yic (Terry Scully).
9
The crew in the Liberator in control. Left to right: Vita (Michael Keating), Gan (David Jackson),
Blake (Gareth Thomas), Jenna (Sally Knyvette) and Avon (Paul Darrow).
So, let's look at the future now. Have you
changed anything in the second series of
Blake’s?.’
Yes, one of the characters is going to die.
And, earlier, you mentioned your new
project Bedouin.
It’s a marsellous adventure story to be shot
in the desert. I think twelfth century. The
Ciusaders. It's just possible that the
Crusaders could be around in the period of
my picture. It might be tenth century. I’m
not sure.
This is a feature for the cinema, isn't it ?
Yes, with the projection that it could
ultimately turn into a major American net-
work hour-long special. The director is not
assigned and the producers are a company
who are based in Geneva. The man I’m
“In the second series of
Blake's 7 one of the characters
is going to die."
working with is a super guy called Hal
Vaughan; we’ve had very exciting discus-
sions. I love getting into these kind of
projects. This is the marvellous time when
you’re talking about it: everything is
ejrr/7//i^— what can you achieve?
Can you tell me anything about Bedouin .’
It honestly is a bit early days yet. It’s a real
adventure story and there is one aspect of
it that will have some . . . You see, as soon
as you say “Arabia" and "fantasy”, you’re
into the Hollywood version of it. which is
not what we have. It’s something quite
different. I’m merely saying that some of
the strengths of the heavies in it come out
of things that are long-forgotten and past.
If you want to take the simplest level of
hypnotism, they have that. But they also
have much more potent powers from the
ancients to unite their particular force.
Powers from the ancients?
Possibly even— it has been said aloud in
our discussions— Who taught the Egyptians
to build the pyramids? . . . It’s in our
thinking. But, at this point. I’m not letting
it really influence things until I know more
the nature of the creature I’m dealing with.
Is there a Wisdom? The Von Daniken kind
of thinking. I disapprove of him entirely;
but is there a Wisdom somewhere that there
could have been from another source?
lyiiy is money being put up Jor an Arabian
story when there's no apparent market for
Arabian stories?
Well, is there not? That’s the point.
Everyone still wants to finance sharks and
creatures from outer space, don't they?
I started Blake at a time when I thought
science fiction was going to be right and the
fact that we opened the same night as Star
Wars in this country seemed to prove that
thinking right. Now there’s this project
Bedouin. It’s a new look, it’s a new back-
ground, a new dimension and I think it
could be quite an interesting one.
IVhy do you think the time is right?
Well, perhaps it is dimply the fact of new
locations and backgrounds. Maybe it’s that.
I’ve been watching Haw the West Was Won
(on TV). It’s a good scries. Again, it’s
telling the stories of about seven people, so
you’re intercutting the stories all the time.
And we’re back to real old-fashioned
cowboys - and - Indians. It’s story - telling
again. That’s the cycle that I believe is
constantly coming up. Story-telling.
“I disapprove of the Von
Daniken style of thinking
entirely."
Whether we tell it against sand or against
space, I want good stories.
And after Bedouin what will you be doing?
Well, I frequently wonder what I’m going
to be when I grow up. I’m not sure. I know
it will be writing. I think it will be writing.
I mean. I’m really newly-excited about
Bedouin. I’m high on it. It’s my current
drug. But I wouldn’t like to think that for
the next five years that is going to be . . .
I’ve been too long with products. When I
create a product of my own or I’m deeply
involved with a product at its beginning, it
takes three to five years out of my life and
I should be doing more things. I’ve got
more things I want to do. I mustn’t stay
with things for as long in future. I must
move on and move on and find out where
I need to go.
RoJ Blake (Gareth Thomas) poses with some Jriends who appeared in the fifth episode of the first
series o/ Blake's 7, "The Wei".
10
Complete Dalek index
In the preceeding interview, Terry Nation
mentions that he did not write all the Dalek
serials for Dr Who. Here, we present a complete
listing of Dalek stories in the series.
First Season, 1963-64
The Dead Planet (7 episodes by Terry Nation)
The blond Thais and mechanical Daleks have
survived an atomic war on the planet Skaro.
The Thais, after generations of mutation, have
become perfect human specimens. The Daleks
are creatures who have lost the use of their
bodies and limbs; they can only move and
survive inside their protective metal casings,
powered by static electricity from the meui
floors of their city. The Doctor lands on Skaro
with his human assistants, Susan, Ian and
Barbara. They try to help the starving Thais
but are tricked by the Daleks, who kill the
Thai leader. In a counter-attack on the city, the
Doctor and the Thais defeat the Daleks by
cutting off their source of electrical current.
(The story was later made as a feature film
Dr Who and the DaMu in 1965.)
World’a End (6 episodes by Terry Nation)
The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara land in
London in the year 2164 AD. The Daleks have
successfully invaded Earth and turned most of
its inhabitants into Robomen (human robots)
by clamping metal control discs on to their
huds. Other human slaves have been trans-
ported to a vast mining complex in Bedford-
shire. The Daleks have discovered a crack in the
planet’s shell and aim to remove the Earth's
core, replacing it with a magnetic power system
so that they can pitot it anywhere in the Uni-
verse. The Doctor and Ian are captured by
Robomen and taken to the Dalek leader, who
tries to robotise the Doctor in a flying saucer
parked in Trafalgar Square. Ian escapes to
Berkshire and faces the Daleks' man-eating pet
Slyther. Susan and a freedom-fighter, David
Campbell, destroy the Daleks’ radio network
with a bomb. This immobilises the Daleks’
control and the Doctor successfully urges the
Robomen and slaves to rise up against their
masters. The Daleks are defeated. Earth is
saved and Susan stays behind to be with her
new love. David Campbell. (The story was later
made as a feature film Daleks — Invasion Earth
2150 AD in 1966.)
Second Season, 1965
The ExecutkHien (6 episodes by Terry Nation)
The Daleks are infuriated at the Doctor’s
interference in their plans. So they use a time
machine to follow him through lime and space
with the intention of exterminating him. There
is a brief encounter on the desert planet Aridus.
Then the Tardis lands on the Empire State
Building, the Marie Celeste, a gothic castle
containing Dracula and the Frankenstein
monster — and finally on the mechanoid planet
Mechanus. The Tardis and crew are captured
and meet Steven Taylor, the sole survivor of a
spaceship crash and the only human on the
planet. The Daleks arrive, leave their time
machine and start to fight with the Mechanoids.
Ian and Barbara steal the Dalek time machine
and use it to get back to their own time. Steven
and the Doctor escape in the Tardis.
Third Season, 1965-66
Miaaioa to the Uukoown (I episode by Terry
Nation)
The Space Special Security Service has heard
rumours of mysterious happenings on the planet
Kembel. They send agent Marc Cory to in-
vestigate, but his crew are killed one-by-one
by the alien horrors which infest the planet.
However, Cory does discover the planet’s
secret: the Daleks are there in force and they
intend, once and for all, to destroy the human
race on Earth. (This single epis^e re-intro-
duced viewers to the programme after a Sum-
mer break. It was followed by an un-related 4-
part story, set in Troy, then by The Nightmare
Begfaw.)
The Nightmare Begins (12 episodes by Terry
Nation)
In 4000 AD, the Doctor lands on the planet
Kembel, where Space Security agent Bret Vyon
is trying to warn Earth about the Dalek threat.
But he is mistaken for a traitor and shot. The
Tardis then lands on the volcanic planet Tigus,
pursued by The Meddling Monk (from Dennis
Spooner's previous 4-parter "The Watcher”).
Finally, back on Kembel, the Doctor activates
the time-destructor, wiping out the Dalek
invasion, but killing space agent Sarah Kingdom.
Fourth Season, 1966-67
The Power of the Daleks (6 episodes by David
Whittaker)
The Doctor has been re-juvenated and now has a
totally different appearance and personality.
(Patrick Troughton took over from William
Hartnell.) The Tardis lands on Earth colony
Vulcan in 2020 AD. The Doctor finds two
inanimate Daleks in a spaceship stuck in the
Mercury Swamp. He discovers that the planet's
chief scientist Lesterson has removed a third
Dalek, has re-activated it and plans to use all
three as servants. However, rebels intend to
use the re-activated Daleks to help them over-
throw the colony's governor. Unknown to
everyone, the Daleks have set up a reproduction
plant on a conveyor-belt system: th^ plan to
exterminate all humans. But the Doctor finds
their power-source and turns it against them.
The Evil of the Daleks (7 episodes by David
Whittaker)
On Earth in 1967 AD, the Tardis is stolen and
driven off in a lorry. The Doctor and his com-
panion Jamie follow it to an antique shop selling
Vktoriana. The shop is owned by Edward
Waterfield, who takes Jamie and the Doctor
back to London in the year 1867. It turns out
that the Daleks are holding Waterfield's
daughter prisoner. With her as hostage, they
force the Doctor to run an experiment on
Jamie, registering every emotion he shows while
Waterfield's daughter Victoria is rescued. The
resultant "human factors” are injected into
three new Daleks so that they will be able to win
future battles against humans. But the experi-
ment is a failure: instead of human cunning, the
Daleks have learnt playful friendliness from
Jamie. All the Daleks are re-called to their home
planet of Skaro, where their leader tells the
Doctor to take the "Dalek factor” (the im-
pulse to destroy) back to Earth. The Cioctor is
processed in a machine which transforms
humans into mental Daleks. But, as the Doctor
is not a human, the machine fails and the
Doctor is able, instead, to humanise the Daleks.
Seventh Season, 1972-73
The Day of the Daleks (4 episodes by Louis
Marks)
Peace diplomat Sir Reginald Styles is attacked
by guerillas, who escape to their 22nd century
world, taking Dr Who with them. In the 22nd
century. Earth is ruled by the Daleks and their
ape-like slaves, the Ogrons. The guerillas say
they kidnapped Styles because he murdered
world leaders in the 20th century, thus making
the Earth vulnerable to Dalek attack. By
kidnapping him, they will prevent the deaths of
those world leaders and thus prevent the Dalek
invasion. But the Doctor realises the real
murderer is a guerilla left behind in Styles’ 20th
century house. So he returns and evacuates the
house while the guerilla destroys the pursuing
Daleks with a Dalakanium Bomb.
Planet of the Daleks (6 episodes by Terry Nation)
The Doctor is pursuing the Daleks and lands on
the planet Spiridon, but then falls seriously ill.
His companion Jo sets off for help and meets
Thais (see The Dead Planet) who are on a
suicide mission to destroy the Daleks. Jo
herself contracts a fungus disease and is cured
by a friendly, but invisible, native. Survivors of a
crashed Thai spaceship tell the recovered
Doctor that there are 12,000 Daleks on the
planet, immobilised by the cold. The Thais
activate a bomb, releasing an ice volcano which
will freeze the Daleks for centuries.
Eighth Season, 1973-74
Death to the Daleks (4 episodes by Terry Nation)
A space plague attacks all living creatures in
the galaxy. The only antidote is a mineral oil
which is only found on the planet Exxilon — the
home of a savage, degenerate race, who re-
jected all technology after their perfect, auto-
mated city expelled them. The Doctor and his
companion, Sarah Jane, find themselves
caught up in the middle of a battle between
humans, Daleks and Exxilons for possession of
the vital antidote. Helped by a friendly native,
the Doctor saves the antidote for humanity and
one of the humans sacrifices his life while
blowing up the Dalek spaceship.
Ninth Season, 1974-75
Genesis of the Daleks (6 episodes by Terry
Nation)
The Time Lords send the Doctor, with com-
panions Harry and Sarah Jane, back to the
planet Skaro at the time when the original war
between the Thais and Kaleds was reaching its
crucial stage. The Doctor’s mission is to pre-
vent the birth of the Daleks but. when he
lands, he is hunted by both sides. He eventually
becomes the prisoner of Davros, the brilliant
crippled Kaled scientist. Davros has invented a
mechanical outer-shell in which to house the
creature into which the Kaleds will eventually
mutate, genetically crippled after centuries of
warfare. But Davros bMomes obsessed with his
creation and gives the Daleks (mutated Kaleds)
destructive powers and a ruthless intelligence
which were not part of the original design. The
Doctor helps lead a revolt of dissident Kaled
scientists, but Davros helps the Thais to destroy
his own people in an attempt to preserve the
Daleks. Then he uses the Daleks to wipe out the
Thai city and destroy the remaining Kaleds who
oppose him. The Doctor manages to entomb
Davros in his fortified bunker, where the Daleks
turn on and kill their creator. In the bunker, the
Daleks start to prepare for the day when they
will emerge to rule the galaxy. The Doctor, who
has only partially succeeded in his mission, is
whisked away from Skaro by a Time Ring.
Terry Nation abo wrote one other story for the
Dr Who series:
The Sea of Death (6 episodes by Terry Nation)
The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara land on the
island of Marinus, where the sand is glass and
the sea is acid. The Tardis is captured by
Arbitan, Keeper of the Conscience of Marinus —
a machine that rules the island absolutely fairly.
However, the four keys that make it work are
lost and the Doctor goes off in search of them.
When he returns, he finds that Arbitan has been
murdered and the island conquered by Yartek,
leader of the alien Voords. They force the
Doctor to hand over the four keys. But one is an
imitation and the machine explodes, blowing
itsel** and the Vdbrds to pieces.
II
Migaiint
Planet ol tha Apes (B6W)
Advanturas on Planet of tha Apes
(colour)
Amaiing Advanturas (colour)
2001 : A Space Odyssay (tabloid)
2001 : A Space Odyssay (colour)
Machine Man (colour)
Logan's Run (colour)
Doc Savage (colour)
Doc Savage (BhW)
Star Wars (colour)
Star Wars (colour)
Star Wars (colour)
Marvel Special Edition (tabloid)
Star Wars Weakly
Marvel Super Special (colour)
Marvel Special Edition (tabloid)
Island ol Dr Moreau (colour)
Tha Deep
Marvel Movie Pramiara (B6W)
Man From Atlantis (colour)
Marvel Super Special (colour)
Marvel Super Special (tabloid)
Battlastar Galactica (colour)
Numbers
Dates
1-6
Aug 74-Jan 75
7-11
Mar 75-Aug 75
12-16
Sept 75-Jan 76
17-21
Feb 76-June 76
22
July 76
23-28,
Aug 76-Jan 77
1-21. 23-29
Aug 74-Feb 77
1-11
Oct 75-Dec 76
18-39
May 73-Nov 76
1
Oct 75
1-10
Dec 76-Sept 77
1-9
Oct 77-June 78
1-7
Jan 77-July 77
1-8
Oct 72-Jan 74
1-8
July 7S-Spr 77
1-6
July 77-Oec 77
1-6
—
7-present
Jan 78-pretent
1
1977
2
1978
3
1978
1 -present
8/2/78-present
3
1978
3
1978
1
Oct 77
1
Nov 77
1
Sept 75
1-7
May 78-Oct 78
S
1978
8
1978
1 -present
Mar 79-present
Sourca
Planet of tha Apes (20th Cent Fox)
Beneath tha Planet of the Apel
(20th Cent Fox)
Escape from Planet of tha Apes
|20th Cent Fox)
Conquest ol Planet ol the Apes
(20th Cent Fox)
Quest o» Pltnet of the Apes (new—
bridges the gap between Conquest
and Battle)
Battle lor Planet ol tha Apes
(20th Cent Fox)
Terror on Planet of the Apes (new)
Reprint film adaptions from BBW
magazine
War ol tho Worlds (new)
2001 : A Space Ddyssay (MGM)
2001 : A Space Odyssey (new)
2001 ; A Space Odyssey (new)
Logan's Run (MGM)
Doc Savaga (stories adapted from the
pulps)
Doc Savage (new)
Star Wars |20th Cent Fox)
Star Wars (exact reprints ol above)
Star Wars (new)
Star Wars (reprints Star Wars 1-3)
Star Wars (reprints Star Wars 4 6)
Star Wars (reprints Star Wars 1-6)
Star Wars (reprints Star Wars 1-
present)
Close Encounters of tha Third Kind
(Columbia)
CE3K (reprints Marvel Super
Special 3)
Island ol Or Moreau (AlP/DDA)
Tha Deep (Columbia)
The Land That Tima Forgot (Amicus )
Man From Atlantis (tv)
Jaws M (Universal)
Battlastar Galactica (Universal)
Battlastar Galactica (Universal)
12
W ell. I iliil ;iiul I diiln'l. Ik-liL-Nc a
man can ll>. llial is. as the Sii|ht-
iiiaii puhlicits machine assnrcil me I
won 111.
Main ol the Using scenes iifir lery
good and at limes the illusion was perleet
(and I'm happy to say that I neser spotted
one wire) but there was something wrong
somewhere and it wasn't until al'lerwards
that I reali/ed it had to do with the lu/r
Su|x-rman look oil. Most of the lime he
didn't bound or leap into the air. like
ficorge Keeves used to do in the old Is
series, but simply rose slossly into the air
like a helicopter. I his gase the impression
that he ssasn't llying by means of his
su|ser-slrenglh but ssas instead utilising
some sort of anii-gras iiy (dree.
Ol course, it you ssani to Ise logical,
the ssay Su|>erman Hies in the eomie books
suggests that he is doing just that
long-gone are the days sshen his Hying
ssas just a super leap |x;rmitted by I arih's
sseak grasity in comparison to his home
world of krypton. In fact, as Su|x;rman's
abilities base Iveome closer to omni-
potence since his hist ap|>earanee 40 years
ago the rationale Ix-hind them has Iveome
more and more eoinoluled. iinoliing
yellow suns and all sorts of other factors.
In the moiie .lor-l 1 makes a weak
attempt ii' evpiain the situation by saying
that his son's powers are bi'th a result of
his dense molecular structure (yet later we
learn he is of normal weight) and the rays
from Krypton's sun . . . all of which gix's
to show that trying to be logical about
Suivrman is an esereise in (utility. N Hu'ie
lust got to accept him as he is.
Anyway, apart from the Hying, how
was the rest of the moiie',’ Pretty good. 1
thought. Not as gooil as I'd ho|vd but
certainly the Ivst attempt so far to put a
comic hook sii|vr-hero on the screen.
I ortunaiely the director. Richard Donner.
denied to treat the whole thing as straight
as possible and though there is a lot of
comedy, and some camp humour remi-
niscent of the Italiiiaii ti series of the mid-
siMies. the fact that Su[X'rman himself
comes across as a hc/it-xahlc character is
the film's main strength. (I hate to imagine
what would ha\e hapix'ned if the lilm's
original director, I nglishmun Ciuy Hamil-
ton. who had wanted to turn it into a
complete send-up. had remained with the
project it was \iial that the creative,
guiding force Ix-hind Superman should
come from an American who would be
familiar with Su|x-rman as part of his
cultural background.)
The lilm's other main strength is
( hrislopher Rex-ve who plays Superman.
He is almost (x-rfext for the part (he's
just a shade loo young) anil I can't think of
anyone else who would have worked as
well though I used to think that ( lint
Walker (tv's ( lieyenne back in the early
PWitK) would have been ideal. And
( harles Rronson would be |x-rfeei as
Hi/arro he wouldn't have to wear make-
up.
It would have been so easy for the film
makers to have chosen some nuise'le-man
for the job of wearing Su(x-rman's blue
suit but instead they wisely east a real
actor for the part and then turned him
iiili) a muscle man. with the result that
Reeves provides a solid core for the movie
with both his dignitied portrayal of a
super being and his subtly humorous
impersonation of mild-mannered clumsy
C lark Kent . . . but let's ho|X‘ he hasn't
type-east himself well and truly for good.
Jiir-I / (Marlon Iti.indo) tiiiil l.iiiti (Susanna N ork) \iiu/ lliiii \iiii to iiirih. mi ihtil he will \iii\ivf
the th\li IK lion ol ihcii home /'lintel, hex /'ton.
15
Supermaneand TM DC Comics Inc, 1978
Superman is going to be a tough act to
follow.
Superman purists will no doubt quibble
with the changes that the him makers have
made to the familiar Superman legend,
and with some justification f feel. The
Krypton of the comic book has been
turned into an ethereal ice world with
most of the population apparently living
in a single city within a crystal plateau,
all of which looks very impressive (“1
didn’t want to make Krypton look like a
1938 comic book with the Grecian
columns and the gold chairs and the
space ships that dropped dust out of their
asses as they went by,” said Donner). As
in the original story, Jor-EI’s warning
that the planet is doomed is ignored by the
High Council, but whereas in the comics
Krypton was destroyed when its molten
core erupted, in the him the planet is
destroyed in a collision with its sun. This
does lead one to ask the embarrassing
question as to why all those super brains
on Krypton didn't even notice that their
planet was heading towards the sun until
the actual day of contact. After all, it's
not the sort of thing you could easily
miss seeing .. .
As per legend Jor-EI (a convincingly
sincere performance by Marlon Brando)
succeeds in sending his baby son off into
space towards Earth where he eventually
crash lands near a middle-aged American
couple called Jonathan and Martha Kent.
There is some wince-making dialogue here
— on finding a baby in the space vehicle
Martha reacts by simply saying: ‘‘We’ve
prayed and prayed for the Good Lord to
send us a child and now he has . . .” as if
this was a common method for human
progeny to be delivered. There’s then a
Jump in the narrative to when the baby
has grown into a teenager and railing over
«
crystalline structures magically rise out of
the water. This turns out to be the Fortress
of Solitude but bears little resemblance to
the one we know and love in the comic
books. Inside the Fortress the young
Superman establishes a kind of spiritual
contact with his dead father and is taken
on a quick tour of the universe which in-
cludes a visit to Krypton’s sun ... we then
see him emerge fully-grown from his ice
palace and dressed in his Superman gear
for the first time (as editor Perry White
wonders later in the film: Where did he
get the costume?).
Fortunately all this portentous mys-
ticism comes to and end at this point and
the movie really gets into its stride with
Clark Kent’s arrival at the Daily Planet
office in the city of Metropolis (which
bears a striking resemblance to New York).
The sequence where we meet such charac-
ters as Perry White (.Jackie Cooper),
the fact that he must keep his powers a
secret (there’s an embarrassing sequence
when we see him out-running an express
train — the effect is so unconvincing it
makes the Bionic Man’s slow-motion runs
look good). There’s no suggestion of him
acting as the Superboy of the comics
though Lana Lang, his girl friend in the
Superboy stories, makes a brief appearance.
“You’ve been put on this Earth for a
purpose, I know it,’’ Pa Kent (Glenn Ford)
tells him shortly before dropping dead.
This suggestion of Divine Intervention
and the mystical tone that the film assumes
when young Clark Kent discovers a
crystal device containing a message from
his father, suggest that the movie may
really be about the Second Coming in-
stead of a comic book character. This
mood is continued when the youth makes
a pilgrimage to the North Pole, throws the
crystal into the sea and watches as giant
Above : Marlon Brando plays Superman's
father, Jor-EI. Above right: Superman soars
high above the Metropolis skyline.
Is it a bird ? A crowd of bystanders cheers as Superman makes his debut to rescue Lois Lane.
Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) and Lois
Lane (Margot Kidder) is marvellous thanks
to the excellent performances by all con-
cerned, not least of all by Reeve himself
as the bespectacled, shy Clark Kent whose
first request to his new boss Perry White is
that half his salary be sent home each
month to his mother in Smallville, much
to the amusement of the cynical Lois. “Are
there any-more like you back home?’’ she
asks sarcastically. “No, not really,” Clark
replies. Also great fun are the sequences
where Superman reveals himself to the
city, first rescuing Lois from a helicopter
(great effects!) and then going on a crime-
fighting spree, snatching up criminals and
delivering them to the police.
It’s during this section that Lex Luthor
is also introduced and I'm afraid I con-
sider him to be one of the major flaws in
the movie. The way the character is
written, and the way Gene Hackman plays
him, is very enjoyable but he jars with the
mood of the rest of the film. With his
garish costumes, his bumbling assistant,
Otis (Ned Beatty), and his slinky female
companion. Eve ( Valerie Perrine), he re-
minds one too much of one of the campy
villains featured in the Batman tv series,
like the Penguin or the Joker. He’s un-
deniably amusing — he gets most of the
best lines — but it seems a mistake for the
film makers, after spending so much of the
film’s running time on establishing Super-
man as believable character, to make the
chief villain so obviously unbelievable. Like
Superman, Luthor should have been
treated relatively straight and played as a
17
Top: Superman (Christopher Reeve) eyes Otis (Ned Beatty) warily In the underground lair
Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). Centre: Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) lands an exclusive interview
with the Man of Steel. Above: This Is a job for Superman. Clark Kent makes the startling
transformation.
more overtly sinister character (Telly
Savalas would have been my choice for
the part. . .).
One sequence in this part of the film that
works particularly well, and which pos-
sesses a genuine sense of wonder, is where
Superman takes Lois on a night flight over
New York and then up through the clouds.
Lois’s growing exhilaration after her
initial fear is successfully communicated by
Ms Kidder, as is her sudden shock when
she lets go of Superman’s hand and
suddenly finds herself plummeting earth-
wards. The flying effects arc quite con-
vincing here and the only thing that spoils
it all is the rather banal accompanying
song.
From then on the movie is concerned
with the unfolding of Luthor’s plan to
cause half of California to fall into the sea
by sending a nuclear missile into the San
Andreas fault (”We all have our faults and
mine’s in California,” says Luthor). The
sequences involving the nuclear missiles,
the earthquake and Superman’s efforts to
avert the catastrophe are all very spec-
tacular (the effects in these sequences vary
in quality but some are brilliant) but not
really as entertaining as the Metropolis
sequences— I would have preferred to sec
more of Superman’s dual life in the city
which is really the film’s chief source of
fun. But there’s sure to be more of that in
Part 2, along with the battle between
Superman and the escaped super-criminals
from Krypton who we saw imprisoned
within the Phantom Zone at the start of the
film (though people not familiar with the
comic books may have been somewhat
mystified as to what was going on). If
Part 2 is as entertaining as Part I it’s
going to be well worth waiting for.
Superman: The Movie (1978)
Marlon Brando (or yor-£/). Gene Hackman
(Lex Luthor), Christopher Reeve (Superman!
Clark Kent), Margot Kidder (Lois Lane),
Ned Beatty (Otis), Jackie Cooper (Perry
White), Glenn Ford (Pa Kent), Trevor
Howard (First Elder), Susannah York
(Lara), Phillis Thaxter (Ma Kent), Jeff East
( young Clark Kent), Marc McClure (Jimmy
Olsen).
Directed by Richard Donner, Story by
Mario Puzo, Screenplay by Mario Puzo,
David Newman, Leslie Newman and Robert
Benton, Edited by Stuart Baird, Photo-
graphed by Geoffrey Unsworth, Production
design by John Barry, Music by John
W illiams, Special effects by Colin Chilvers,
Optical visual effects by Roy Field, Mattes
and composites by Les Bowie, Model effects
by Derek .Meddings, Makeup and special
visuals by Stuart Freeborn, Executive
producer Ilya Salkind, Product by Pierre
Spengler. Distributed by Warner Bros.
Time: 143 mins. Cert: A
An in-depth article on the Superman
special effects, including interviews with
three of the effects men concerned, is to
follow in the next issue o/Starburst.
STARBURST LETTERS
I tt* that Starbunt ia now publiihtd by Marval
Comics Ltd and thay saam to ba fairly tuccatsful (I)
and tharafora Starbarat should ba. At laast I hopa so.
That only laavas ona worry; bacausa htarval usually
dual axclusivaly with comic strip publications. Star-
barat may bacoma comic strip oriantatad. Plaasa.
not that! I much prafar writtan short storias (lika tha
ona in tha first issua by Harry Harrison).
On tha arhola Starbarat appaars to ba vary intal-
ligantly writtan, wall put togathar and wall prasantad.
On tha whola. I thought tha covar was particularly
striking (avan though I didn't lika tha photo) with tha
yallow background and rad titla.
I didn't agraa with avorything. most aspacially tha
Incradibla Hulk faatura. Wondar Woman I ragard
as ona of thosa things that tands to gat mora than
monotonous aftar tha first faw apisodas (tha sama
can ba said for tha Sis Million Dollar Man and tha
Binnic Woman). Actually I ragard Wondar Woman
as trash and an insult to my intalliganca. Tha storylinas
of this programma ara so pradictabla, so corny that I
wish tha villians would win for a changal
I find tha lattars column most intarasting and if you
avar ramova this part of Starbarat I will ba mora than
just annoyad. I think a lattars column is an integral
part of a good sf magazine.
Ian Churchward, Torquay, Davon.
Although I admit I found tha first thraa issues of
Starbarat to ba generally quite good, I refrained from
commenting on them, for tha simple reason that I was
convinced that it would never last I mean just look
at all tha many, many othar madia sf magazines that
have appeared only to disappear since tha release of
Star Wart. Suffice to say that I was grinning smugly
whan Starbarat 4 did not appear— it's gone, I thought,
and I'm not surprised.
So imagine just how surprised I was whan attending
tha first British Fantasy Film Convention to learn that
Starbarat was, in fact, alive and wall and living at
Marval.
Wat it arorth it? Wat Starbarat worth it?
Yat. It was worth it ... I can definitely say that with
Starbarat 4. At I said aarliar, I thought tha first thraa
issues to ba quite good, but I wasn't too struck on them,
Issua 4 is quite a different magazine though: far
superior to tha aarliar issues. In SB 4 you team to have
got tha right combination— this is "tcianca fantasy in
tv, cinema and comix", at tha banner claims . . . issues
1 to 3 wart not.
SB 4 is visually a batter magazine at wall. Why the
improvement? I don't really think tha superior quality
it bacausa you ara now "a Marval Monthly", no, not at
all— more a determined tHort by all contributors to
give a batter variety of contents.
I am now dafinittly axcitad about Starburat,
something I could not claim about the first three issues.
You have something hare, something good, and I think
tha reason for Starbarat 4'a succass, and tha way to
ensure succass on later issues, was spelt out in tha
lattars column by Peter Farman of Maidanhaad. whan
ha waid SB was "a magazine which can knock as wall
as praise sf". This it it— you ara a critical magazine:
if something's good than you say it's good, if some-
thing's rubbish than you say it's rubbish. This, togathar
with tha overwhelming enthusiasm which is apparent
behind Starburat. is your formula for success, a
tarriric driving force.
Never before have I bean so thoroughly hooked on a
magazine, with ona exception (an obscure magazine
called Houaa of Hammer; anyone out there remember
it?), and I wish you every succass.
Paul Richmond, Darlington. Co Durham.
I was startled and delighted to sea Starburat on tala
once again. However, my pleasure soon fizzled. What
with Hiaro'a Journey, Tho Silent Flute, Lord of the
Rings, Tho Hobbit. Marlin and tha comic strip, tha
mag looked lika a Sword sod SorcorrlKosg Fs
Mosthlf—Xoo much of tha sama thing for ona issue.
Evan worse, tha features ware non-events— Tha
Hobbit probably won't ba seen ovw hare. Lord of tha
Rings isn't out yat. Silliphant't projects future is
uncertain, at is Boorman's Marlin.
Stirling Silliphant it "ona of tha bast scraanwritars
in Hollywood." Really? Aftar Shaft. Longatrsot and
Irwin Allan's cornflaka spies (small-minded films on a
big seals?) ha may have needed tha money, but why
churn out clichdd drivel lika Tho Swarm, with its
cardboard characters and comic-strip names to match
—"Brad Crane" and "Dr. Krim". Silliphant't waffle
about Hiaro'a Journey doesn't sound vary mind-
boggling— mora lika 60t Flower-power mysticism
gona stale. Doug Trumbull's association with tha
project it odd— especially as ha was supposed to ba
doing hit own project Brainstorm (SBli) and develop-
ing a revolutionary filmic concept. Finally, a$3i million
budget is a paltry sum for an epic mindbogglar. aspa-
cially from Columbia, reaping in CE3K profits. Wa had
prominent poster artwork for Tho Silent Fluta (which
is hardly relevant because it's not avan mentioned in
tha interview) plus ona photo and a three-word review
—"an excellent fantasy". I'd prefer a full review. Tha
interview was a big let-down aftar tha marvellous
ones with Anthony Daniels and Harrison Ford in
issues 2 and 3. I hopa that tha promised interviews
with Dave Prowsa. Steven Spielberg. Douglas Trumbull.
John Dykstra. and John Ca^antar will appear soon.
Tha issues bast features ware tha War of tha
Worlds article, and Things To Corns which managad
to ba mora informathra and witty than avar. Also much
appreciated ware tha Book World and Bocord World
columns. Despite my disappointment over No. 4 I
eagerly await tha next monthly (hurrah I ) issua.
Starburat shares tha market with tha American
Storlof (now it has British distribution), and I'm
relieved to see that mention of tha mag is not taboo.
Tha two mags can exist side by side— there's room
enough for both. Starburat's advantages ara that it
provides astute critical reviews: being British is
accessible to its readers; and can provide information
about the British release dates.
In the past few years Amarican tv has churned out
cheap-tack sci-fi drivel— Fantastic Journey, Invisible
Man. Gemini Man. Man from Atlantis. Lagan's
Run, all of which flopped, and were snapped up by
BBC and ITV. Now that it seems that quality, expansive,
high-rating sf has mada it on to U.S tv, ITV and the
Beeb aren't interested. The smash-hit Battlsstar
Galactica series will be in cold storage until well
after Universel has ralaased the edited-down pilot
in the cinema, but what about all tha other shows?
Starburat can provide an invaluable service for its
readers by buzzing ITV and the Beeb to find out when
the programme buyers (the folk who bought all those
conveyor-belt cop series over the past 5 years) are
going to come to their senses.
Requests time ; (1 ) How about a review of Damna-
tion Alley, after the previews in iuues 2 and 3. 1 was
astonished to find it had suddenly turned up at my
local cinema the other day (it usually takes months
for movies to make their way up north to Lancaster),
and I haven't read a single newspaper review or seen
a film clip on the telly film progs. I'm currently debating
whether to pay out £1.20 and gamble on it being worth
watching.
(2) Let's please have an article on 2001, Kubrick's
60s wonder. It's as good a time as any. now it's on
re-release (I saw it recently), and the film's aesthetic
influence is tremendous— both Star Ware and Clasa
Eucauntara borrowed from its imagery. There's a
potential Storborst Intorviow too— Wally Vaevers, tha
British special effact veteran who supervised the
model effects, and who has been working on Superman
recently. A specific 2001 question— what happened to
the beautiful spacecraft models, especially the 8 foot
and 64 foot long "Discovery" models? (Trak'a
"Enterprise" is displayed in a Washington museum).
A 2nd specific question— the BBC recently bought
2001 for tv screening— when can we expect to see it?
(3) A John Brosnan article on the Superman
special effects, interviewing the British team. Wally
Vaevers, Les Bowie and John Richardson,
(4) Information, please about 2 new British sci-fi
shows in the pipeline— ATV's comic-strip sounding
Sapphire and Steal with Joanna Lumley and David
McCallum, and Thames' new Ouatarmaas production
with John Mills.
(5) I note several requests for Spaca 1908 in
issues 2 and 3. The show had to contend with much
anti-sf prejudice (as Lucas did when trying to finance
Star Ware) and was refused by the American networks
in 1975. having to be sold to individual local stations
"in syndication", an awkward and costly move. In
Britain ITV refused to give it publicity and full net-
working. which were later accorded to the Avengara
and Saint revivals. Also, Td Timos. which filled its
pages with Avengers and Saint articles, altogether
ignored 1999 despite its big financial success abroad
(it tapped the ratings in France). 1999 badly needed a
science advisor, the stones were poorly thought out
end tended towards muddled mysticism, the episodes
lacked pace, and the lead characters were ciphers,
despite a competent set of actors.
Space 1999 was. however, a technical triumph,
and its spacial affects (by Brian Johnson, now on
Star Wars 2) and production design have been praised
even by the show's sterner critics, and made it the
most visually exciting sf tv series ever (though the
title may now be taken by Dykstra's Galactica work).
I would think most reviews of 1999 would be more or
less in line with what I've said. What would be wel-
come though, is a Gerry Anderson appraisal of the
series, and where it went wrong, plus lots of photos,
reflecting its visual excellence.
In conclusion. I'd like to wish Starburat every
success now that it is on a regular monthly tale.
A. G. Marrit, Skartan, Lancs.
On the Silliphant points you raise, remember
that there's more than one man involved in the
end product of a movie, tt constantly angers
me to see writers praised or slammed for their
movies. Unlike novelists, their work goes
through many stages of editing, re-writing,
actor /director /producer /budget cuts, and so
on. More often than not. little can remain of
the original writer's concept. Yet he alone is
praised or attacked for the whole story from
concept to finished footage. Still, that's
showbusiness.
Just about everything else you mention
we're actually working on. John Brosnan has
completed his piece on the Superman
special effects and interviews, Quatermass 4
and Sapphire 8i Steal news to come, Gerry
Anderson article in the pipeline, and 2001 was
covered last month.
How's that for service ?
Seed all commaats aad qaaries to as at:
STABBUBST lETTCBS.
Jadwia Hoasa,
205-211 Keatish Towa Road.
Loadoa NWS.
Starburst Preview
Special preview by Tony Crawley
W ELL now . . .! Forget Space
Cruiser (which, in the circum-
stances, is not easy), of rhere
comes Tokyo’s multi-million dollar re-
sponse to George Lucas, Doug Trumbull,
old uncle Stan Kubrick and all. Science-
iktion, Japanese style. Minus cartoon
characters. Oh, I don’t know though. . . .
What we have here is . . . The Magnificent
Seven (well, eight) meets Star Wars for a
Star Trek on a Space Cruiser in Space 1999
(give or take the odd galactic millenium).
And yes, the script is about as muddle-
some as you might expect from such a
conglomeration of launching-pads.
If nothing else, though, this film proves
that George Lucas (and his conglomer-
ations) will have to quit trying to sue
everyone daring to make sci-fi or space
fantasy movies. George will have to accept
it as a fact of life, a measure of inter-
national respect for his bonanza movie —
that much of Star Wars is now being
A pre-production painting of some of the fighter craft that appear in the film.
Dog-fight in space. Avoiding the fioating space debris, the three space craft battle to the death.
A strange mixture oj old and new. An
armour-clad viking-like raider urges his men
^^^_aboard^jhe^^converiedj£ace^^aljeon^^^^
taken — as the norm, the new traditions
of space-operas.
In its effects, characters and overly
complicated ‘simple’ story, Kinji Fuka-
saku’s Message From Space owes about
as much as it does to Flash, Kurosawa,
Melies ... the list of derivations is endless.
20
even if George’s nose is in front.
Here again we have a planet seeking
salvation from cruel invaders. Very cruel;
to demonstrate their power they go one
better than the Grand Moff Tarkin. They
destroy the entire Moon.
Here again is Carrie Fisher’s tomboy
princess, only now she’s an armament-
millionaire’s tomboy daughter. Here, too,
the robots are just as useful/playful and
qever over-done. The nightclub’s robotic
waiters, however, seem to have stepped
right off the set of Woody Allen’s Sleeper.
The film’s younger heroes have also
rolled off the self-same assembly-lines as
Luke Skywalker: naivete plus vigour.
There’s a Han Solo character as well, with
a moustache, more cynicism, and some-
what older than Harrison Ford.
I mean, good lord, the Japanese try
everything. . . . They’ve even roped in
Japan’s Columbia Symphony Orchestra to
try to do battle royal with the LSO. John
Williams can relax; Tokyo’s Ken-ichiro
Morika is good, but no match for
Williams.
Then again, it’s not all Lucas There’s
a generous helping of Gene Roddenberry,
plus a liberal dollop or two of the Ander-
sons, Gerry and Sylvia. Again, why not?
These are the leaders in space opera. They
set the trends, so they’re hardly going to
be ignored. Other film-makers can only
follow their lead, jump on their band-
wagon and try — at the very least! — to go
one step further, one step beyond the
basic rip-off stage.
The actual message from space takes the
form of eight liabe nuts. They’re some
form of holy fruit; looked like walnuts to
me. They’re flung up on high, straight
into space by the chief of the invaded
¥ .
planet, Jillucia. Whoever finds these nuts
about their person, in their pockets, in
their space-craft, suddenly glowing bright
orange in their hands, are divinely recruited
to come to the aid of the planet.
In short, then, the title could read:
Nuts In Space.
That would be a trifle cynical, even for
me. Because I’ve got to admit that, even
in a Japanese language print, 115 minutes
of often absurd sub-titling, they try very
hard. Too hard, perhaps, in trying to cover
too much ground at once. A most credit-
able space romp, though; much better
than any of Italy’s cheap nonsense. The
four Japanese gentlemen who created the
epic (including director Fukasaku and his
scripter, Hiroo Matsuda) pull out all the
stops in a praiseworthy effort to make
their movie one step for Japanese film-men,
if not exactly a giant leap for movie-
mankind.
For Japan, this is a real big-time venture.
A kind of Towering Inferno S7.5 million
tie-up between two major Tokyo com-
panies: Toei and Tohokushinhsa. They
imported Vic Morrow from Hollywood
for the lead role (well, for top-billing
anyway). He’s the Brynner of this Mag-
nificent Eight; thou^ it’s difficult to
judge his performance when dubbed in
Japanese . . . which takes some getting used
to.
There’s another pair of (apparent)
Americans among the teenage saviours.
Plus Tokyo’s major current attraction.
Sonny Chiba, more usually a street-
fighting man, and veteran Japanese star,
Tetsura Tamba, still remembered fondly
from two Lewis Gilbert movies: The
Seventh Dawn (1964) and 007’s You Only
Live Twice (1967).
Message beat Star Wars into the Tokyo
box-office (the last opening for George’s
film in the free world) with a smash-hit
premiere during April’s Golden Week —
when three national holidays collide inside
a sidgle week, and cinema managers can
best be recognised as those gentlemen
rubbing their hands together with the
most glee. Salesmanship was terrific —
including covering one entire side of
Tokyo’s Sony Building with a mammoth
display, complete with sound effects.
The sound of the movie is great, too;
Space Sound 4, no less, a new four-channel
system. The actual film unfurled later than
scheduled one morning at the Cannes
festival, so late that most of the assembled
multitudes started a slow handclap routine.
The few Japanese on hand joined in,
obviously mistaking annoyance for polite
applause!
And so to the movie which, as I say, I
caught in its original Japanese sound-
track print, with English sub-titles, and
IS minutes longer than the mid-Atlantic
dubbed version to be sold around the
world.
Jillucia is a planet — two million light
years away from the solar system, on the
verge of total obliteration from the evil
21
Steel on steel. Hand to hand combat in a
tsnaaes oj apace eniuer vamoto. An ancient galleon is converted into a very different kind of
"spaceship".
invaders, the Gavanas. In a final bid to
save his planet’s people from destruction,
Kido, the very Biblical-looking patriarchial
leader of what appears to be a group of
former C. B. DeMille extras, chucks eight
liabe nuts into space to entice eight people
brave enough to team up and save Jillucia.
Eight hardly seems a sufficient number
in the circumstances, but maybe he only
had eight nuts. Anyway, he also sends his
grand-daughter, Emeralida, and the war-
rior, Urocco, to check where and upon
whom the nuts may land. It’s a motley
crew group of people, to be sure. And,
unfortunately, juvenile to the extreme of
one dimwitted chubby Nipponese buffoon
impersonating Lou Costello . . . very badly.
When he’s eventually located, sleeping
off another binge, Vic Morrow becomes
the group’s natural leader. He may look
like a tramp now, but he is a former space
general of this particular Terran colony-
planet, Millazalea. He’d been sacked
earlier on for wasting money, to say
nothing of an entire rocket, in his senti-
mental decision to ‘bury’ Bebu-2, his
long-time though now defunct robot
assistant, in deep space.
Morrow, then, bKomes the brains. Kids
like Shiro, Aaron and Jack, plus the
tomboy princess type, Meia, supply sur-
prising expertise. They can fling their
spacecraft around like Andretti— illus-
trated in one fantastic outer-space version
of Bullitt (better still. Driver), in which the
lads out-drive, wit and manoeuvre the
Space Patrol cops. Meia makes inspired
use of the lads’ crafts, affixing their ships
to her own, and ending up with a very
Andersons-like battle cruiser that can
separate and divide into three speedy
craft at the appropriate moment. They
name this ship, Lialx. What else?
Meanwhile, as one must say in these
kind of ventures . . . meanwhile, the Peter
Cushing clone, Rocksair, tyrannical head
of the dastardly Gavanas, turns his
selfish sights on poor old Earth. (He
doesn’t just send off a squadron of space-
ships: like Space 1999’s Moon Base
Alpha, he merely moves the entire Jillucia
planet closer to Earth . . .) His first wave
attack is ferocious and the puny Council
of the Federation of Earth is no match for
them. Without need of a nut, the council’s
chairmans ends for Vic Morrow to mediate
on Earth’s behalf.
By which time, our munificent eight
(including Prince Hans, son of the ex-king
of Gavanas, and another liabe nutter)
have set their plans and fight the great
fight against the mighty Gavanas fleet.
They realise the only way to rush the
baddies’ fortress, hidden deep in the planet,
is to destroy Jillucia. Sure enough, despite
the fierce gunfire and enemy spacecruiser
formations, our trusty heroes take a leaf
straight out of George Lucas’s aerial
textbook, and wheel in to bomb the very
heart of the fortress . . .
Jillucia turns into a veritable sea of fire.
Prince Hans crosses swords (just swords,
no laser-fhingies) with King Rocksai, and
Kido, the elder, sends his young Jillucians
away in the proverbial nick of time to
maybe live a better life in a more peaceful
part of the universe. (I can’t help wondering
what the old fellow thought of the heroes
his liabe nuts found for him. He wanted to
save his planet, after all, not have it blown
to smithereens).
Jillucia explodes before our eyes, the
way the Moon went earlier. Yes, we have
no Gavanas! The liabe nuts bloom — big,
white flowers in space and the Jillucians
and their heroes nip off for pastures, and
probably, sequels new.
While the script is average, the dialogue
is terrible and quite often risible (“I had
him on Pluto” got a big laugh). I would
expect the English (or American) dubbed
100-minute version to be better in terms of
dialogue. Little, though, can be done
about the curiously episodic storyline
(rather like Space Cruiser). Characters are
introduced and literally disappear for
three ’’chapters” before returning with a
smile ... as if we’re supposed to remember
who the hell they are. I can find no editor’s
22
An incredible model shot of one of ihelnige bottle cruisers coming in for touchdoH-n.
credit on the movie; this could explain
everything.
In the end, though, whether made by
Lucas or Spielberg, these films stand or
fall on their effects. The unit organised and
directed by one Nobuo Yajimi does a very
impressive job, performing super miracles
with what is officially designated "space-
flying objects” designed by Shotaro Ishi-
mori. My sole complaint in this area is
the use of the by-now obligatory shot of
space-craft passing overhead — over and
over and over again! Apart from that, the
Japanese effects are very impressive, the
best I've seen outside Hollywood, and that's
saying a lot. Lucas could made Star Wars
III over there with considerable ease.
But from all quarters of the film, and as
witnessed first in Space Cruiser (f said it
was impossible to forget that animation
film), the Japanese creators have their
feet planted firmly in their own chau-
vinistic traditions. There is always some-
thing of jesterday's Japan in today's
Japanese sci-fi. A far greater link, in fact,
with the past— history, indeals, and most
of all lessons learned from the ’39-’45
carnage: 'War killed my father and made
your's rich' — than is noticeable in any
other country's spacial output.
For instance (again, straight out of
Space Cruiser), one of our hero's space
vehicles is a kind of renovated boat, fn the
cartoon-film, it was a World War fl
destroyer; here it's a piratical twin-masted
rigger, sails and all. A novel idea, com-
bining yesterday and tomorrow, and such
space-boats suit the higher-than-high seas
very well.
At the same time, it does make one think
that when the Japanese do reach the moon
(as they will because they're fast running
out of other export markets down here),
they'll probably arrive in some form of
renovated, outer-space Toyota . . .
Death and destruction. A spectacu
plenty of explosions.
, tree bottle-cruisers and
Message from Space (1978)
Vic Morrow (as Guarda). Sonny Chiba
( Urocco), with Philip C^asnofT. Peggy Lee
Brennan. Sue Shiomi, Tetsuro Tamba,
Mikio Narita.
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, produced by
Banjiro L'emura, ^ashinori Watanabc and
Tan Takaiwa, created by Shotaro Khimori.
Masahiro \oda, Hiroo Matsuda and Kinji
Fukasaku, screenplay by Hiroo Matsuda.
photographed by Toru Nakajima, music by
Ken-ichiro Morioka, with Japan's Columbia
Symphony Orchestra, art director Tetsuzo
Osawa, science fiction supersisor Masahiro
Noda. Special effects directed by Nobu
3'ajinia. space-craft designed by Shotaro
Ishimori, special effects photographed by
Naboru Takanashi. photographic effects
Minoru Nakano.
A Toei Company/Tohokushinsha Film
Company co-production.
Colour Time: 100 mins
23
Ijf •
^1
jH F
26
L4ut issue Douglas Trumbull spoke of how he first entered into the world of movie special effects and of his involvement with
2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running. This issue we learn more of Trumbull’s role in the making of one of the most
extraordinary movies of all time. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Starburst: How exactly did you land the
assignment to create the special effects for
Close Encounters of the Third Kind ?
Trumbull: Steven Spielberg had this script,
which I liked very much. And I liked Steven.
It was a nice situation. I felt I could work with
him. There wasn't going to be any big ego
problem about me having been a director and
him being a director. We worked that out right
away and came to an understanding about it.
We also agreed that I would shoot all the
effects in 70mm and negotiated a deal for my
company. Future General Corporation, to
subcontract the entire visual effects job. One
of the big incentives for me was that the picture
would not only help me have the money to get
a crew together, find some talents and train
them through the movie, but to set up this
facility for shooting very sophisticated optical
effects.
Your own studio, in fact.
We found a 13,500 sq ft building near my
offices at Marina Del Rey — which provides
clean air — and set up workshops, photographic
areas, optical printing facilities, animation
stands, matte stands, high-contrast film
development and everything else we required.
And Spielberg located his editing rooms near
us in the Marina, about five minutes away.
So now you have everything ready for your next
movie!
I came away from the production with about
nine 70mm cameras and a lot of really nice
equipment and a super facility. We built, for
instance, the world’s largest portable front-
projection screen— 100 ft wide, 30 ft high, on
whMis to move it around the dirigible hangar
we used on location in Mobile, Alabama. We
built an optical printer, modified a lot of
“Close Encounters of the Third
Kind was really an extension
of the stuff I did on 2001.**
cameras and a lot of electronic control systems.
This was the extension of your Magicam system ?
Right, what I call the MTS, Motion Tracking
System. This was similar to what Jerry Jeffress
and Al Miller of Interface Systems had built for
John Dykstra on Star Wars — but they did it
differently for me, with some extra camera
modifications designed and built by my father,
Don Trumbull. But yes, you're correct, it’s an
extension of stuff I did on 2001. Then we had
very simple mechanical set-ups enabling us to
move one camera in one direction at a time.
For Close Encounters, we needed something
more sophisticated, so that the trajectories of
objects could yaw and pitch, bank, roll, turn
and fly off in all directions. Like fighterplanes.
Arul, if I'm reading you correctly, this led to
your MTS, a method of recording all the moves
of the camera in Mobile, to let your cameras
shooting miniature UFOs back in Marine Del
Ray duplicate those movements exactly.
That’s it. We used an eight-channel digital
recording system for repeating moves — exactly.
We had a cassette data storage system — just
like the cassettes in your tape-recorder there.
We put optical encoders, electronic sensors on
the camera for pan, tilt, focus, dolly-track
moves. So we could shoot on the stage in the
Mobile hangar, record every move — put those
recordings back into our equipment in Los
Angeles— identical lenses on the same cameras
— and could dial in a scale relationship to
whatever size model we were shooting.
Obtaining perfect synchronisation of miniature
and live-action photography, although it was
shot miles and months apart.
Right. The result was total visual continuity
down to l/10,000th of an inch.The first time
that’s ever been done.
27
Scientists and technicians look skyward in disbelief as the Mother Ship thunders over their heads.
So how did you approach the visualisation of the
UFOs? Did you have problems deciding how
they would look ?
Well, shooting UFOs is like photographing
God . . . When you have to show a UFO,
you're really dealing with people's very high
expectations. People get a mind's eye view of
things that is often very difficult to match. The
interesting thing I felt about the whole UFO
thing was that from all the many sightings.true
or false, hopeless or not, they had a lot of
common aspects. People reported bright lights
at night . . . indistinct windows . . . glowing
things.
Drawings made of such sightings were always
very crude and photographs always were during
the daytime. They looked like hub-caps thrown
in the air— and sometimes they were! I'd never
seen photographs of UFOs at night. What
I wanted to capture on film was something so
indistinct that the public could not fully
comprehend what it was. Like a ghost. They
would see these UFO things fly by, they would
“When you have to show a
UFO you are really dealing
with people’s very high
expectations.’’
be able to describe the same thing but they
wouldn't be able to draw exactly what they had
seen. Because it wasn't there!
IfV all know that the Mother Ship was supposed
to appear to be around a quarter of a mile across
but how big was the nnidel you used?
Six feet in diameter, weighing about 400 lb.
It was our largest miniature. Made of plexi-
glass, steel, plywood fibreglass and numerous
thin, inch-diameter aluminium tubes — carefully
drill with jeweller's drills to contain neon
tubing. High voltage neon, plus tiny bulbs
requiring quite a sophisticated multiple input
system.
Hot to the touch, then.
Oh yeah, you could easily electrocute yourself
fooling around with it. The neon went up
through it, bending back down again — up
through all those “buildings" on it. It was
just a maze of neon and high-voltage wiring.
Just the one model?
Hmm . . . well, there was a larger section of the
underbelly portion, used once the ship had
settled into place, where you're looking at
those big patterns underneath it. This was just
a big perspex dome, 8ft. in diameter.
Where the people and the aliens come out ?
Yeah, and that section of it — the angled black
protrusion that opened up — was the only full-
size p>art of the ship. We projected the moire
patterns on the dome from an off-camera
projector, with a scanning light source to
create the rippling lights around the edges.
How was the ship dreamed up ?
Originally, it was simply to be a huge black
shape, coming through the clouds — blocking
out all light— then opening up and emitting
lights.
Sounds reminiscent of the 2001 monolith . . .
We actually shot scenes with a huge black
shadow passing over everyone— before we
decided how the Mother Ship would look. We
just knew something big was going to be up
there and framed our camera angles to leave
us a big opening to fill up later with whatever
we came up with.
How did you want it to look ?
My first concept was the underbelly section
looking like a giant hemisphere, and we drew
curved sections of a globe with colours and
lights on it — then a circle of light from which
the black block descends. We started designing
the undersection first and worked backwards
on what the rest would be like.
Where did the city of lights notion emanate from ?
Steven wanted the look of an oil refinery at
night. I knew what he meant, there's one in
Los Angeles, in El Segundo, and it's really
beautiful at night. Hugh derricks, tubes,
smoke, and lights all over it, millions of them.
I took that idea and added what I called a
City of Lights — like the Manhattan skyline,
say.
Or any major city as seen from a plane at night...
Ralph McQuarrie made some sketches. He
blended these ideas and we picked the one we
liked best and built the city-like miniature.
Greg Jein supervised the construction with
project manager Bob Shepherd — a symmetric-
ally circular craft containing several tubular
“buildings” and all this complex neon illu-
mination. Larry Albright, who's a fine artist,
often working in neon, joined us for the tubing.
We were extremely lucky to get him.
How many designs did you go through before
you got it right ?
I'd say we went through half a dozen different
designs. It went through a lot of metamor-
phoses. As a matter of fact, it continued to
metamorphose during photography. Every-
time we went for a different camera angle —
Dennis Muren supervising the photography —
we saw that, well, it needed a couple of little
more things here. We'd have a night crew
come in and glue a bunch more stuff on to
make the camera-angles look good. If you
actually look at the model, it's quite different
“For the Mother Ship, Steven
Spielberg wanted the look of
an oil refinery at night.”
from one side to the other.
Indeed, I've heard tell that if you see the movie
enough times, you can make out a Bruce the
shark, and R2-D2 or C3P0 on the side, painted
on or something? Is that right, or is my in-
formant mad?
Actually, there's quite a bit more than that on
it! But it doesn't show up in photography.
The only thing I have been able to discern is
the R2-D2 — standing upside down on the rim
of the Mother Ship. That's in the very first
shot as it rises over Jillian's head. That's very
easily noticeable.
The model-makers had a lot of fun keeping
themselves awake at night, making extra parts
for it. There are, among other things, a I94S
airplane on a sort of catapult launch— that's
sort of tied in with the planes at the end (sic)
of the movie.
Painted on ?
No, these are actual little miniatures — from
aircraft carrier model-kits or something.
Just glued on for detail. But they're so far back
within the intricacies of the model ship, you
can't see them in photography.
There's also a Volkeswagen van . . . and exact
replica of Darth Vader's ship about half-an-
inch in diameter, and all sorts of things. I can't
remember them all.
The effect where the UFOs pass through the
toll-booths looked like one of the slickest
illusions in the whole movie, even though it
didn't have the overall impact of the Mother
Ship. Was this trick a lot more difficult than it
looked?
I guess you're right. The toll gate was a very
Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) gapes in awe at the
of the Mother Ship.
28
Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) and her son Barry (Cary Guffey) duck as a drone ship hurtles above
the highway.
challenging little problem. And an interesting
solution. It goes by so fast, I'm incredulous
myself that we spent so much energy on
something that only takes about three seconds.
A few frames!
Antazing because both the cop cars and the
saucers go right through . . . iVas that per script,
or an added little trick of yours ?
No, that was in the script. But we never
figured out exactly how to do it until much
later. That was actually shot after we came back
from Mobile, Alabama — shot locally in Los
Angeles. We just had to shoot a real toll-gate
on location at night (one of cameraman John
Alonzo’s numerous pick-up inserts, or 'mop-
ups’ as Spielberg called them).
There was no way we could do any lighting
effects on location. We'd done a lot in Mobile;
whenever a saucer was going to pass over,
we’d pan a lot of very bright arc-lights past
the people, so there was a tie-in of lighting —
from the ships we'd add later.
But, well, since the ships had to go through the
toll-gate, there was no way to pan a light
across there and make the shadows and the
colours work right. On location, we just don’t
have the ability to do anything of any great
complexity . . . you can't do it all out there;
you have to use studios.
A controlled environment.
Right.
So what did you do ?
We went al^d and shot the toll-gate in Los
had an idea the cloud
effects could be created in a
liquid environment, injecting
some milky substance into a
water tank.”
Angeles— the police cars flashing through and
everything. We made a lock-off shot. No
effects whatsoever, flguring we’d work some-
thing out later.
And you obviously did.
We came up with the idea of building an exact
duplicate of the toll-gate. We had to decide on
one or two general approaches. We could
build a miniature, based on scale plans of the
real thing, built in scale, matching perfectly.
weird cloud formations that herald the arrival
and tie it in exactly with the live-action stuff
with our cassette data recording system, same
lenses and everything.
But we ended up actually using another
technique. Instead of trying to duplicate the
toll-gate, we projected a frame clip of the toll-
gate negative onto a table, trac^ it off — as
a forced perspective. Greg Jein and his crew
of geniuses traced it three-dimensionally and
built a forced perspective model booth. The
miniature was very thin— only about I Sins,
deep, but it was 4 to Sft. wide. Looked very
strange, warped out of shape. They built it out
of plastic and perspex so we could pass lights
through it— held from underneath.
And the road?
No road. We just left the road out. We painted
the model m^ium grey, with little plexiglass
windows, with enough reflective surface where
there would be one. Then, we passed the model
UFOs through it on a metal support from
underneath. As they went through they lit up
the toll-booths and cast all the right shadows
and reflections in the tiny windows.
Artd via your cassette data system your cameras
made all the exact same moves as the live-action
shots. Then you married the two shots together
-live-action superimposed with the model action.
Brilliant!
Only way to have done it. You couldn’t have
just burned in a flying saucer. Would never
have looked believable. We had to tie-in all
the lighting, the reflections, everything that
made it real.
Let’s talk about the magical cloud formations
that heralded the arrival of the Mother Ship.
I gather they were formed by injecting liquid
paint into water tanks. That sounds almost too
simple. Therein, surely, lies months of meticulous
work.
You’re right! It took forever.
How did you tackle the problem ?
I had an idea they could be created in a liquid
environment — injecting some milky substance
into a water tank. We did some preliminary
tests; it was one of the very first things we
worked out right at the beginning of the
filming. This was to satisfy ourselves that it
could be done. Scott Squires, a young film-
maker who had just joined us at Future
General, was put in char^ of the project.
We just used some small fish tanks from the
store down the street, and tried various
mixtures of water and paint to find that we
could, in fact, inject a little cloud into the
tank, which would last for at least a few
seconds and appeared to be right. If you ran
the camera at high speed, you could stretch
the shot out by slowing down the speed later.
Beyond that, it was just a huge technical
problem of how to do it on a large scale. With
a lot of water in a large tank. Bob Shepherd
built us a four-sided glass tank, 7ft. square and
about 4ft. deep, rigged with some pretty
sophisticated plumbing; swimming-pool filten,
heaters, pumps and valves — to fill it and
empty it as fast as possible.
We had two more large Redwood storage
tanks, about 6ft. in diameter and Sft. deep.
We’d fill these with water. Alter it, cool it or
warm it, whatever we needed— to create certain
temperature gradients in the water.
We’d All this great big glass tank, and very
carefully light it with a number of different
lighting effects, some on a miniature overhead
rail system above the water — so that there was
a modulation of the lighting of the clouds and
we obtained the right sort of moonlight night-
time effect. Then we’d shoot, setting up the
camera to run at high speed, from 48 to 72
frames a second.
How did you inject the paint, though ?
I wanted to be able to paint the clouds inside
the tank, three-dimensionally. We had a large
manipulator above the tank. We got this from
Central Research Laboratories. It’s a device
used in atomic energy installations, a way of
removing radio-isotopes from a hot room to
a location outside that room. It’s a mechanical,
remote-controlled repeating manipulator: an
arm that hangs down, you put your Angers
inside it and you can grab things with it and
move them around within an environment.
I rigged up a way of using one of those
“You could easily electrocute
yourself fooling around with
the Mother Ship model.”
manipulators with a long probe — a thin black
tube that would inject the paint into the tank,
the near end of it. I could hold it in my hand
outside the tank, and yet move this thing
around anywhere I pleased within the tank.
I would be outside, looking in, moving this
thing around, injecting the paint where I wanted
29
zoo
it — and it worked very well.
Bui very slowly, I imagine.
It’s really a pain in the neck. To get the water
absolutely clear. To get the exact right tem-
perature. To get the paint-mix just right, too.
The slightest mistake and it doesn’t look right
at all. And then it's clean-up time again. You
have to drain the tank . . . clean the tank . . .
filter some more water ... fill the tank again
. . . and by the time we'd done all of that ... it
took so long to clean and fill the tank, we
could only shoot about twice a day. And we
must have done it several hundred times. Just
to get the right takes.
Obviously you didn’t leave this until returning
from the location, therefore T
Most of it was shot prior to going on location
to Mobile, Alabama. All the cloud stufT had
to be prepared in advance, to be used as
process plates. We did come back and shoot
some more later on— for Jillian’s backyard.
3 Lewisham VUaVj^New Cross,
London,SE14, England.
“The toll gate effect was a
very challenging little problem
— and an interesting solution.”
J L
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that was added in post-production . . . and a
lot of other opiicals. On and off, I suppose it
took a year. Just a matter of enormous trial
and error, a lot of expense, a lot of rolls of
film that were shot with it just didn’t look
right, or move right.
H'hat was the actual recipe for the clouds ?
At the fish-tank stage, Scott Squires dabbled
with various chemicals and paints from liquid
antacid to vanilla malts. He finally hit upon
a special mix of white poster paints . . . whipped
up in an electric blender.
One sequence on the script of Close Encounters,
a sequence which was never filmed, intrigued me
tremendously. Spielberg’s idea was that the
UFOs would begin to drop hundreds of “cuboid
eggs’’. They were supposed to spread all over
the Devil’s Tower landing site, “rising, knotting,
binding, squeezing, bleeding, glaring and
finally bursting into golden galactic dust that
races in all directions and right into us”. So
what happened to this in the final print ?
“The Red Whoosh, the thing
that kept following the saucers,
was supposed to be one of the
Cuboids.”
Yeah, that was simply a sequence that wasn't
shot. We did a lot of experimentation on it.
Not only was it difficult to do, but it just didn’t
seem to be paying off as a visual concept.
Weil, what is — or was ... or come the sequel,
will be — a Cuboid?
This was a thing that Steven had written . . .
a sort of ... I don’t know how you’d say it.
A kind of micro-UFO. A small box. An
illuminated box which could just flip all over
the place — like a swarm of bees or something.
The Red Whoosh, you know the little thing
that kept following the three main saucers, that
was supposed to be one of those Cuboids. It
was a little baby cuboid.
Always wondered what that red-dot thing was.
Well, that was a little bit of Disney hanging
in there. Like ... the ugly duckling.
Or the seventh dwarf. So that was a cuboid?
There was quite an extensive sequence written
about these Cuboids being the predecessors of
30
ihe saucers. Or, put there by the saucers to
check things out before they would come. They
were also a sort of locomotion device — a safety
device — for the Mother Ship. Very small
objects with some sort of sensors. They would
stack themselves up in vertical things and
support the Mother Ship as it came down —
a sort of assistance thing, like little baby
tugboats.
You experimented with them, but did you shoot
any Cuboids at all?
Oh yeah, there was actually some cuboid stuff
shot on the set— full-scale. With little fibre-
glass boxes, on wires, with quartz lights in
them. It was just an unsuccessful effect. The
only one, I think, in the entire film.
Can you introduce us to some of your Future
General team ?
Sure. Greg Jein made the Mother Ship minia-
ture. He also supervised the construction of
various miniatures we had of the Indiana and
Wyoming countryside, built in forced perspec-
tives, like the toll-gate. Greg is one of the best
model-makers on the planet. Actually he’s not
working with the crew on the experiments
with the new process right now, as the work
doesn’t involve miniatures — so he’s working
with Spielberg now on his next one, 1941.
Richard Yuricich supervised the whole
photographic and visual-effects operation.
Dick, in my opinion, is the most giftod photo-
grapher working today. He supervised the
matte painting, the optical printing and both
the miniature and live-action photography. He
did that all the way through Close Encounters
with me — and he lived and worked here in
“Originally, the Mother Ship
was simply to be a huge black
shape, coming through the
clouds/’
London with me on 2001.
His brother Matthew Yuricich is one of
only two really good matte painters in the
world, as far as I can make out. He did about
a hundred matte paintings for Don Jarrcl’s
matte-stand.
Our optical dep>artment is headed by Bob
Hall, and Bob Swarthe headed up the anima-
tion department. They all went to great efforts
to use as many effects as original exposures
with various new equipment, to ensure the
highest possible quality. Alan Harding and
Max Morgan did the superb animation
camera work. Dennis Muren supervised the
Mother Ship photography, and Bob Shepherd
was the project manager. Our effects editor
was Larry Robinson, in close integration with
Mike Kahn’s main unit editorial staff.
But you had nothing to do with Puck the alien 7
No, that vyas Carlo Rambaldi’s project. He
built it in Italy ... but he won’t tell anyone
how. I would imagine Puck had a steel and
aluminium framework, covered by his own
very special kind of rubber material. He makes
it just before shooting— the heat of the lights
destroys it very rapidly.
And the other major mechanical effects — in
Melinda Dillon's home and Dreyfuss' truck 7
Roy Arbogast did all the physical effects — he
worked with Steven on Jaws. Roy is not part
of my company; he ran a separate operation.
/ asked your opinion of Star Wars — what about
Close Encounters itself 7 Or are you still too
dose to it 7
All I can say is I’m very proud of having been
The incredible speciafTffectTof^ouglasTrunAuir'^u awesome Mother Ship rumbles over Devil's
Tower in the breath-taking climax of CE3K.
Douglas Trumbull {without a beard'.) waits patiently as director Steven Spielberg lines up a shot
during the filming of Close Encounters.
involved with it. I think it’s a very valuable film.
It’s going to have a lot of impact. It’s a film
that has something to say that’s worthwhile
for once.
Amen to that. How much did you spend on your
side of the movie 7
Almost exactly S3,S00,000.
Is it possible to estimate that in advance 7
Well, I guessed the budget at $3,000,000.
I wasn’t too far out.
Amazingly close, considering you can never be
sure of the time, the work— and therefore the
cost — of every supposedly simple effect.
That’s the nature of the movie. I mean, a movie
of this magnitude. And that’s a problem I
always have with the studios. They just don’t
seem to understand that this work is pure
R & D — research and development. I mean,
you’re lucky if you even get a result. Most
people would be amazed at the way we work in
special effects. It’s a very slipshod, shoot-from-
the-hip kind of business — ordinarily.
I don’t work like that. We do a lot more
planning. But, as most people know in R & D,
nine out of ten times the experiment is a failure.
In movies, it has to be a success. Fortunately,
it only has to work once. It’s still a hit and miss
operation. You can try something a hundred
times over. But if it works righronce, you can
take that one time and cut it into the movie.
It never has to work again. So it is exactly like
R & D— you never have to manufacture the
product! The prototype simply has to work
once.
Next issue, the third and final part of this
mammoth interview, Starburst talks to
Douglas Trumbull about what the future
holds for him and about the revolutionary
new special effects process he has developed
for Paramount.
31
THinCS CDfTlE .1
□isney in Space
Now that Mickey Mouse is fifty. Disney
Productions are showing blatant signs of
maturity. . . . Walt’s company is keen to
distribute other company's films, and will
gamble more money than it has ever spent on a
movie before, in order to catch up with the
Hollywood space race. And we don't mean
The Kids From Witch Mountain Meet The
Cat From Outer Space. . . .
The $17 million and ultra top-secret sf
project is a movie called The Black Hole,
previously known as Space Probe. Shooting
begins in April, with a 122-day schedule
occupying all four Disney stages, and two units
working in harness— neither one knowing what
the other is up to.
If the units begin to find out what's going on,
certainly no one outside the close confines of
director Gene Nelson and his editors will know
the film's climax. Disney security is tighter
than ever, but from the title alone, one fact is
self-evident— the film is offering one explana-
tion for what goes on in the dark side of space,
beyond the black holes. We should all know
the answer by Christmas. And the usual juvenile
japes won't be in it, not with a far from
Disneyesque cast headed by West German stage
and screen star (and director) Maximilian
Actor MoMimif/M Schell sters in Disaey's new spece
epic.
Schell, Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph
Bottoms, the ubiquitous Ernest Borgnine— and
Yvette Mimieux as a last minute replacement
for Jennifer O'Neill, injured in a recent car
smash.
As Space Probe, the Disney answer to
Lucas and Spielberg began pre-production five
years ago with Winston Hibbler in charge.
Following his death in 1976, Peter Ellenshaw
took over the supervision of designing and
building the miniatures and the preparation of
special effects. Eustace Lycett and Art Cruik-
shank are in charge of the special photographic
effects, with Danny Lee handling special
visuals. Frank Phillips is the cinematographer
and the script, by Jeb Rosebrook and Gerry
Day, will be directed by former song-and-dance
man Gene Nelson, a Disney alumuni from Jodie
Foster's Freaky Friday and held in higher
esteem for his work on Paramount's tv-mini-
series, Washington— Behind Closed Doors.
At $17 million. The Black Hole is costing
the Disney operation a good $1 0-million more
than their most expensive (and successful)
movie. Mary Poppins, and $6-million more
than their recent release, the partly-animated
Pete's Dragon. The space film will be recorded
in Dolby sound and utilise $500,000 computer-
controlled effects cameras. The full Star Wars-
like merchandising push is already under way.
including an 60-minute special on the subject
of black holes for use in The Wonderful World
of Disney on tv.
However, Disney is not forgetting its main-
stay family audience. To prepare them, perhaps,
for the more vivid science fiction thrills to
come, the company has lately finished The
Spaceman and King Arthur at Pinewood
studios. A rip-roaring little film no doubt, but
a mere pot-boiler compared with the sheer
Kubrickian bravura promised inside and beyond
The Black Hole.
KDnly...
After the news (Thing to Come, Starburst 5).
of Antonioni's Russian science fiction project
falling apart at the seams, comes news of the
Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa's
new Russian film collapsing. A great loss ... it
was to have been another version of Poe's
Masque of the Red Death.
LUhy (TledusaP
As if we really cared. Richard Burton has been
spouting forth on why he made such a fatuous
film as The Medusa Touch— one of the big
flops of '78. despite being directed by the
brilliant Jack Gold. "I fought against doing
that like a madman," snorted Burton. "But it
was the same old story. 'Look, we've drummed
up a $1 .8-million on your name . . . 'Four times
in that project. I said 'No. no, no'. The last
time I said, 'Okay, how long will it take?' In
fact, it's not a disgraceful film— and I've been
in some of those in my time. I've woken up,
particularly in my drinking days and thought,
'What on earth am I doing on this piece of
crap ?' Equus is one of the few films I've been
in that I've seen." I know this feeling, Dick—
since you stole the lead in Equus, I've refused
to see anything you're ini
Super* Horror \
Margot Kidder drops her Lois Lane cover and
marries James Brolin in The Amityville
Horror— a movie refused by several name stars
because of the subject matter. The film stems
from Jay Anson's true-story book about a
haunted house in Amityville, Long Island, in
which mass murders had taken place long
before George and Kathleen Lutz bought the
place, moved in— and then left in absolute
terror within a month. The current owner of the
house doesn't seem bothered by ghosts, and
refuses to be invaded by film units, so the
movie has to be made in a similar building in
New Jersey. Stuart Rosenberg directs the
things that go screech in the night, and the
rest of the fearless cast includes Rod Steiger,
Michael Sacks from Slaughterhouse 5 and the
Jaws mayor, Murray Hamilton. Margot Kidder,
of course, could hardly be frightened by a few
ghosts ... not after surviving Brian De Palma's
Sisters in 1973.
nkl Bite on the flitek
Great to see Barbara Steele back on the
exploitation screen, even if in something as
predictable as Joe Dante's Piranha, from
Roger (krrman's combine. Also involved in this
A shot from Jiws' littlo brothor. Pirhana, a qoickio
film from Roger Cormoo.
gory tale of Jaws' little, whippersnapper
cousins— which makes up for a very soft centre
with a rivetting finale— are trusty stalwarts
Bradford Dillman, Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wyn
(losing both legs), Corman reliable Dick Miller
and, from tv's Logan's Run, Heather Menzies.
But it's the barbaric Ms Steele who steals all
as a chillingly ambivalent government scientist
dealing with a rash of piranha attacks in
Texas. "There's nothing left to fear." says
Barbara at the end, lying her head off and
obviously promising us a Piranha 2 before the
end of the year. ... (If not, the recently
revived Republic Pictures will be offering
Barracuda, anyway).
The film opened in Britain after the funniest
series of Press handouts since the heyday of
humorous hype from Carl Foreman's
McKenna's Gold in 1968. concluding with a
32
Hines cnmE .thh
lapel badge insisting: It'll Be AH Bite On The
Nite. Wit behind this spit and polish campaign
was United Artists' down-under import, Helen
Robinson. We expect her to be decorated by
jolly Roger Corman any day now.
Bartek LUark^s Bgain
Director Paul Bartel has finally got a new
movie to make, after the collapse of several
Hollywood plans, including the Frankencar
number. In February, he'll be in Berlin helming
Britain's new horror treat. The Horrific
Movie House Massacre, a $2.5 million venture
from The Odd Job producer Mark Fostater.
Spiekberg S P
Steven Spielberg's quiet right-hand man. Joe
Alves, has won his director's spurs with a
lavish sf project. Weatherman, already five
years in the planning. A former racing-driver.
Joe worked on all three Spielberg movies and
Steven should be lost without him on 1941.
Joe had more than one digit in the making of
Bruce in Jaws, and not only designed the
CE3K landing site, but also located the massive
dirigible hangar in Mobile, without which most
of the film's highspots could never have been
accomplished.
Joe Who. you're saying? Right, you've never
heard of the guy. He receives less publicity
in all the volumes of Jaws/CE3K articles and
books than the tea-boy on the Spielberg set . . .
just the occasional mention in passing. Only
Carl Gottlieb, co-writer of the Jaws films,
seems to have praised him in print. "I'm over-
simplifying, but Joe Alves ... has made a
contribution that is unappreciated by folks
outside the business, and it's time everyone
realised that sets and costumes aren't picked
off racks, props don't appear out of a truck
and the visual unity of the physical elements of
a film production spring from one special
craftsman's mastery of his art."
Well, now Joe is getting his just rewards.
So. indeed, is writer-producer John Chavez.
26. Since starting the project as an UCLA
student. John's spent five years writing,
re-writing, researching and evolving the
Weatherman film, which, quite naturally, his
own Weatherman Production Company will now
make as a $12 million parable of future times
. . . when man controls the weather.
John has his special effects being handled
by the Apogee Inc set-up (who are also
working on Paddy Chayefsky's Altered States).
Apogee links many of John Dykstra's Star
Wars crowd, plus John's genius of a mentor.
Douglas Trumbull. John Chavez, however, is
far more excited in spiriting Joe Alves away
from Spielberg's corner. "He's famous for
getting difficult material on the screen,"
praises John. "It was Joe who designed the
mechanical shark for Jaws and Jaws 2. and
was production designer on CE3K and Jaws.
This will be his first directorial chore, one of
only two production designers who have made
the transition."
Actually. Joe Alves (then credited as Joseph
Alves. Jr.) was art director on Spielberg's first
feature. The Sugarland Express, before the
two monster hits. And although he designed
Bruce, it 'was ex-Disney man Bob Mattey, who
created the mechanicalia which made it work.
We wished Joe Alves and John Chavez every
good fortune, but let's hope John's script is
better researched than his background informa-
tion on Joe Alves.
Shaping Up
Dver in Canada, it's vice-versa . . . That which
producer Harry Alan Towers announced at last
year's Cannes festival as a super-duper (or
super hyped) movie has been turned, overnight
as it were, into a huge tv series, called The
Shape of Things to Come. The most expen-
sive in the CTV network's history, if not in
Canadian history. One wonders where the
money went as Jack Balance, Carol Lynley
and John Ireland are the less-than-exciting
lead stars. However. Star Wars' Oscar-
winner John Stears has come up with a new
robot. Sparky, to help win fans and influence
ratings.
"We're trying like everyone else to make a
33
ia..TD..cnmE
.THincs
very good show," says Harry Alan Towers.
"And we have the funds to do so. H. G. Wells
wrote The Shape of Things To Coma in the
later years of his life. He dealt with fantasy
in terms of fact, relating the life people lived
then, fantasised in the future. We've adapted
this to how people will adapt to a future
world." (Don't you just cringe when people
talk of adapting legends like H. G. Wells?)
"We've taken more than the title, and we
are trying to present an entertaining look into
the future, based on how people understand
life today." In other words, complete with
commercial breaks. Backing up the so-called
star names is young Canadian actor Nicholas
Campbell, and London's New York-born
starlet from some rubbish called Emily, Koo
Stark. Koo appears as a highly independent
Actnss Koo Stork.
type, half-Moonie, half-Earthling. With Camp-
bell in tow, her tours of a devasted earth
(only useful in supplying the moon colony
with water) leads Koo into weekly discoveries
and (yawni) adventures. Including the dis-
covery of the Sparky robot, her devoted
companion . . . once she puts his parts back
together again.
Hokij □oVouSuel
Lost in the shuffle of recent events, the news
that sf writer Harlan Ellison is suing ABC-tv
and Paramount Pictures about their quickly
axed TV series. Future Cop. That's the one
where Ernest Borgnine was a veteran cop with
a robot partner . . .
Ellison and Ben Bova claim they wrote a short
story in 1970 called Brillo, about just such a
duo. In 1973, they allege, they were invited to
develop the idea for the ABC network. ABC
dropped the idea, and then the writers claim,
an ABC executive, then working at Paramount,
discussed the idea anew with Ellison. Come
1976, ABC bought from Paramount a 90 minute
pilot film, and ordered thirteen hour episodes.
Thus. Future Cop was born. Michael Shannon
played the robo-cop, with Ernie Borgnine as
the human partner. And the authors further
allege they always suggested Borgnine for the
role.
Our question is, if Ellison and Bova win their
case, can they then sue ABC again (with
Universal-MCA this time) because of Holmes
and Yoyo? Maybe they will, but first they're
also after Paramount's hide for an NBC tv-
movie called Cops and Robbers, which they
allege was pinched from another of their ideas.
There should be a tv series in all this, some-
where.
Robo-Jim
All of which brings me to a story told by Jim
Dale, Disney's current space star in The
Spaceman and King Arthur. Jim first set
Hollywood alight in the Young Vic production
of Moliere's Scapino, an outrageous comedy
performance, full of bravura, physical dancing
and action stuff. So what did American tv
want him to play? Only the robot cop in
Holmes and Yoyo ... I’
"I had the greatest problem trying to get
through to these people, telling them, "Look,
if you've got a guy who is very athletic, don't
put him in a soap-opera as the patient in the
iron lung, because you're not getting your
moneysworth. The guy who can't move, who
uses his eyes to act with put him in the iron
lung. But if you've got some physical presence
there— use it I
"No good I I was led from one office to
another and I could not convince them. 'I
think it's rubbish.' I'd say. 'Oh well, why
don't you go into the next office and meet
Julie, she's our production co-ordinator . . .'
Julie would say. 'Jim, what a wonderful series
this is you're being offered . . .' 'No it's a
load of garbage r 'Ah, well, perhaps you'd
like to meet our Mr. Oigby, he's our script
controller . . .'
"Finally you end up talking to the guy on the
front gate I— They're all trying to convince
you it's the greatest thing ever. In the end.
Holmes and Yoyo was about the only show I
was offered that actually got on tv. I turned
them all down, because it was all rubbish.
Pathetic rubbish!"
Bigger Buch(s)
Television can forget Buck Rogers. For now . . .
Universal-MCA's notion of screening Buck
Rogers in ths 25th Century as a pilot for a
future tv series has been axed. The reason:
to see if Buck can generate big box-office
bucks. The pilot film is being released as a
feature movie in April (in the United States).
The series will follow that, if the movie's a
smash. Until that fact is known, all the series
scripts have been shelved in limbo.
None of which news should come as any
major surprise. Buck's executive producer,
after all, it none other than Glen A. Larson, man
behind Battlestar Galactica, which is crest-
ing more interest (and money) as a Sensurround
movie in America, Canada and elsewhere
(Europe to come) than as a tv series. So much
so. a second Battlestar movie is planned
later this year. The Buck Rogers show,
starring newcomer Gil Gerard, is less of a
gamble for Universal, considering it was made
with a budget as low as $4,000,000. Could it
be that Glen Larson is pinching from his own
Battlestar effects sequences . . . ?
SF Underujater
Barbara Bach, the most successful Bond Girl
since Ursula Andress, joins Richard Johnson and
Joseph Cotton in the latest attempt at science-
fiction, Italian style. The project is Sergio
Dioboticallf created to recover a huge treosure
at the bottom of the sea..
TheK lived and tought in the ocean deep...
Martino's Tha Fishman— "diabolically created
to recover a huge treasure at the bottom of the
sea, they lived and fought in the ocean deep."
Gets you right in the gills, doesn't it?
□uichies
Superman 2 is due out for the summer of
1980, which means, I suppose, we can expect
the double-bill by 1981 . . . just before Super-
man III in '82. Will it ever end, I ask myself?
King Kong's Jessica Lange returns in All
That Jan; about time too. Kong wasn't her
fault . . . David Warner is Jack the Ripper in
Time After Tima . . . Latest mini sf item from
Hollywood. Time Warp, sets Chris (son of
Robert) Mitchum among the veterans, Dorothy
Malone and Jim Davis ... The next Spidey
movie, plucked from TV, will be Spider-Man
Strikes Back . . . Before tackling Star Wars 2,
Harrison Ford found time to join Gene Wilder
out West in No Knifa Instead of reverting
to tv. where he so obviously belongs, the Jaws
2 director (I), Jeannot Szwarc, sticks to
features, courtesy of producer Ray Stark. . . .
34
.TD..CamE .THinGS..T[
neteoric Changes
Big change of heart and budget on Sandy
Howard's mammoth Meteor disaster epic. The
film, starring Sean Connery, Natalie Wood,
Henry Fonda, Karl Malden, Trevor Howard and
Brian Keith, and directed by Britain’s Ronald
Neame, was all finished, wrapped, edited and
ready to open as a $1 3-million smasheroo. Not
any more. Or not just yet . . . The climactic
destruction of an earth-bound meteor by
combined US and USSR rocket attack has been
scrapped and being shot all over again at the
cost of $1,250,000 to bring the movie up to
special-effects scratch. Ronald Neame hurriedly
sent out for his editor and production designer
from The Poseidon Adventure. Harold Kress
and Bill Creber, to handle the re-shoot along-
side visual-effects expert. William Cruse, and
special effects woman, Margot Anderson.
Producer Sandy Howard, who set up the
lavish venture with backing by Warner Brothers
and Sir Run Run Shaw's Hong Kong combine,
still has every faith in the movie. "It's sensa-
tional," he told us. "A big. very suspenseful
film made by an outstanding film-maker, Ronnie
Neame— to whom neither I, nor the line-
producers. had to say one word, apart from
Hello. Ronnie's a masterful story-teller. He's
produced five of David Lean's pictures, and
has so many successes of his own as both
producer and director over the last 18 years.
I have nothing but the most enormous respect
for him. He's objective! He's a great old pro!
He makes lots of these young fellows, who
think they're marvellous, look like bums."
rriErlin’s Dn
Great news from our San Francisco pals.
Summer and Eddie Brown. Their long-mooted
Merlin project (Starburst 4) is still very
much on. Shooting begins before the summer,
for their brand-new Pyramid Enterprises, which
should start coining some money for them
shortly with a chiller release. Human Experi-
ments. starring Linda Haynes, Aldo Ray. Jackie
Coogan and his sister. Ellen Travolta.
Thongor is Coming
No star signed as yet, but Milton Subotsky has
located his director for Thongor in the Valley
of the Demons. The name: Harley Cokliss, an
afro headed, bearded young American graduate
of the London Film School, lately completing
his feature debut, Torquay Summer, which he
fervently hopes will be re-titled Free Style.
Subotsky, however, was first turned on to the
Cokliss talent after seeing his two Children's
Film Foundation movies. The Battle of Billy's
Pond and The Glitterball at the National
Film Theatre.
"I want to get back to the styles of the first
King Kong." Cokliss says of the sword and
sorcery project, "where you cannot have a real
tree or a real rock. Once you enter that strange.
stylised world, anything and everything can
happen. You immediately suspend disbelief."
Puppet animation, plus front and rear projection,
will be utilised in the film in which. Thongor
apart, there is a great magician's role for "a
really juicy actor" like Peter Ustinov or Ralph
Richardson.
Conan is Coming
While kicking his massive heels and waiting,
along with the rest of us, for filming on Conan
to start. Arnold Schwarzenegger flexes his
muscles in Villain— making Kirk Douglas look
small for once, likewise Ann-Margret. The
movie is Hal Needham's first outing minus
Burt Reynolds, after the massive triumphs of
Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper. As for
Conan the $1S-million project of Phantom
of the Paradise producer Edward Pressman
continues to use up scenarists and directors
both. Spielberg's close pal, John Milius, has
wanted to make the film for longer than anyone,
and both John Frankenheimer and animator
Ralph Bakshi are said to be ultra-keen. But
as the latest script is being tailored by Oliver
Stone, who wrote Midnight Express, it now
seems highly likely that Britain's Alan Parker,
who made Express, Bugsy Malone and Joan
Collins' funny Cinzanzo TV commercials, should
get the job. As reported here before Frank
Frazetta, who painted most of the Conan book
covers, has definitely been signed as visual
consultant and now both Ray Harryhausen and
Jim Danforth are offering their model services.
More to come on this one, as long as Arnold
Schwarzenegger does not diet in the meantime.
StikI Rising
Another big chap on the movie warpath is
Richard Kiel, the 7ft 2in giant brought to
memorable notice as the steel-toothed "Jaws"
in The Spy Who Loved Me. He encores the
35
] . . cnmE .THincs
role in the new 007 venture. Moonraker, and
surfaced under a beard in Force 10 From
Navarone. Not that a set of whiskers can
disguise a walking mountain like the 23 stone
Kiel. In one of his earliest films. Otto
Preminger's dreadful Skidoo (1968). Dick Kiel
has his screen credit sung Since Bond, his
billing has become almost as high as himself,
and everyone is singing his praises. He joins
the sf route as The Humanoid in Italy, on
which more in a later issue (much more, that's
a promise) and now Dick's rising again as
The Phoenix for. of all set-ups, a Taiwan
company.
Vablans' Plans
Perhaps we're reading too much into this news,
but it looks like producer Frank Yablans had
learned a salutary lesson from The Fury. . . .
He's signed up Coma's Michael Crichton for
two films, while Brian De Palma dances over to
the Travolta clan. Coma was one of the best
thrillers of last year and Crichton deserves
backing. Unfortunately, like Yablans. he
seems to have tired of horrofic chills and his
two-picture deal is for a comedy and an
African adventure yarn. (Yablans and Oe Palma
are expected to team up again, sometime
before the end of the century for The
Demolished Man.)
Poe Corner
There appears more interest— and haste— in
filming Edgar Allen's Poe's life than any more
of his stories. Sylvester Stallone, who resembles
Poe as much as Barbra Streisand, has been
longing to play the writer for years. But he's so
busy with re making Rocky— whether he calls
it Paradise Alley or Rocky II— that he's lost
out to Keith Carradine in a Canadian venture,
and may be to Francois Truffaut in a Paris
version. Personally. I doubt if Truffaut will ever
play the part; since, but not exactly because of
CE3K. he's announced he will continue to act
in his own films only.
The Sound of SF
Huh? What on earth is The Sound of Music
doing in Starburst? You may well ask . . .
and the answer should surprise you. Recent
office investigations have shown that as well
as learning their doh-ray-mes from sugar-
larynxed Julie Andrews and moody Poppa
Christopher Plummer, the seven Von Trapp
kids were really undergoing science fiction
training.
The overly beautiful young blond lad in the
short pants, standing next to the saintly Julie,
happens to be Nicholas Hammond . . . better
known these days as The Amazing Spider-
Man.
On t'other side of Miss Saccharine is a
blonde-topped girl, name of Heather Menzies
. . . better known, once upon a short time, as
Jessica in the short-lived tv version of Logan's
Run.
And that's not all. . . . The tiny brunette lass
on the end of the line, two away from Heather,
is none other than Angela Cartwright, alias
Penny of the space family Robinson in Irwin
Allen's Lost In Space series for three years.
Well, three out of seven ain't bad. We're
musing on an idea to bring the trio back together
again for a brand new, prime-time series:
Edelweiss in Space? Are you listening.
Gerry Anderson . . . ?
The End is High
The disaster move to (hopefully) bury all
disaster movies— Irwin Allen's The Day The
World Ended— is all ready to go. At last.
Shooting with Paul Newman, should have
begun last May. ;intil script headaches had
Allen's trusty wordsmith Stirling Silliphant
rushed in to add his touch (not his Swarm
touch, we hope) to Carl Foreman's scenario.
However, the genesis of this film goes even
further back. Twentieth Century-Fox first
announced the project in 1975, then sold it off
to Warners for a cool million dollars. First script
36
DmE .THinGS..TD..CDn
by Nelson Gidding was based on the original
story and first draft of Edward Anhalt. He'd set
it up as a period piece on the island of
Martinique, circa 1905. Carl Foreman
modernised it when he started work early in
1976. And now production begins on February 9
in Hawaii. The shooting schedule calls for 72
days' work, not counting the special effects
work which helps push the budget to $20
million. Director is James Goldstone, who
worked well with Paul Newman on his motor-
racing trip. Winning, ten years ago.
Hokkj's That f^gainP
George Romero's Zombie (and/or Dawn of
the Living Dead) has been banned in. of all
places, the Lebanon for, of all reasons, being
too bloody. For Beirut? They've got to be
kidding!
Cronenberg'S ^nan
British director and distributor, Stanley Long
(of Alpha Films) is keeping the faith with
Canada's David Cronenberg. After great
business with Rabid. Stan has bought David's
new movie. Brood, before a single shot was
fired, so to speak. The script and the Cronenberg
name was good for Stan to complete the deal.
Brood, we hear, is stronger on violence than
horror. No matter, Stan Long is making up for
any loss himself. For his next two movies, he's
moving out of his usual sex-comedy slot and
joins the modern horror genre with a hypnotism
thriller. Brainstorm ... and a chiller about
mutants, called Plasmid. Sounds good. Don't
know about the smell though, most of Plasmid
will be shot in the sewers of London. . .
Spielberg 3 F
Meanwhile, Spielberg's main cinematographer
on Jaws, bearded Bill Butler (his bearded
namesake, Michael, shot Jaws 2). is also
turning director. Bill's first assignment sounds
like Jaws 3— Adrift and Beyond. Shootings
started in January in Malta.
□bituarg
"A brilliant and imaginative writer cut off in
his prime." was John Dark's reaction to the
shock death on October 30th of his fantasy
film scripter, Brian Hayles. Producer Dark was
speaking on the Pinewood studios set of
Arabian Adventure, the second consecutive
film he and director Kevin Connor were making
from an original Hayles script. The first was
Warlords of Atlantis. Brian's death is a
considerable tragedy the British film industry
can ill afford; he had just entered movies after
radio/tv success and had become a firm part
of the Dark/Connor success story. While their
films can easily be written off as family-fodder,
a step behind— or indeed ahead of Disney—
Brian Hayles showed enormous potential. He
was an inspired successor to the Dark/Connor's
team's previous mentor, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Born March 7, 1930, in Portsmouth. Brian
Hayles set out to be a sculptor, until deciding
it an uneconomical way of life. He qualified
as an art teacher instead, and spent a year
"standing back looking at my life from a
distance" in Canada, before deciding writing
was his fortd. He developed his talent while
continuing to teach art at a private Birmingham
school for nine years, until confident enough
to earn a full-time living with his pen. He
worked on BBC radio's everlasting daily
soap-opera. The Archers (he was invited to
write the 7,000th episode in November 1977),
and his rare ability to cross-over between
contemporary realism and fantasy-fiction sup-
plied scripts for six adventures of Dr Who,
two Doomwatch stories, as well as the soccer
saga. United, and an episode of The Regiment
Then, he became increasingly fascinated with
the untapped powers of the human mind,"
exemplified by his masterly BBC-2 play.
Double Echo, about a telepathic autistic
girl seeing the future with the guidance of a
doctor experimenting in ESP. Within a few
weeks of his death, his latest tv work. The
Moon Stallion serial, based on The White
Horse at Uffington, with a blind, psychic girl
in the pivotal role, began transmission on ITV.
A flyins ctrpel tskes to the thin Arebiin Adventure.
His book of the story was published in
December.
Brian Hayles and John Dark first got together
when trying to set up a tv series for Christopher
Lee. The idea never got off the drawing-
board, but Dark and Hayles most certainly did—
and in fact. Chris Lee returned to Britain for
the first time in three years to take the lead
role(s) in their Arabian Adventure film. "I
couldn't resist it" said Lee. "It's a very fine
screenplay by Brian, falling into the true fairy
tale genre of romance and beauty combined
with the kind of wickedness and violence
which has sent delicious shivers down the
spines of children of all nations since time
immemorial."
Just before his tragic death. Brian Hayles
had submitted the first draft of his third
original Dark/Connors script— about pirate
ghosts. Three family entertainment movies
may not add up to much by some filmland
standards, but we have to agree with John
Dark and Kevin Connor— Brian Hayles will be
sorely missed. "If you're really determined
to be a writer," he told us once, "there
comes a point when you have to make a
decision about it. before it is too late." Alas,
Brian never knew how tragically late he
was . . . even though in his few years at the top.
he gave us. and has left us, with a feast of
fantasy entertainment, and often thought-
provoking studies into the unknown.
Their Duin kUrite
Hot-shot Oscar-winning scripter William Gold-
man (Butch Cassidy, Marathon Man, All
The President's Men, A Bridge Too Far.
Magic) is penning The Year of the Comet
for promoter Joe Levine. . . . Arthur Penn is
directing another Oscar-winner's latest, Paddy
Chayefsky's Altered States, which should do
for science what Hospital did for medicine and
Network for TV The best Hitchcock-scribe
John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, To Catch
A Thief, and my favourite. The Trouble With
Harry) is scripting the $8-million movie of
Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates. . .
HoH. Lives
Hammerhead Michael Carreras, back at toil
again with the re-make of Hitchcock's The
Lady Vanishes, is preparing a series of
thirteen (of course) Gothic specials for US
television, under the umbrella title. Hammer's
House of Horror. Now where have we heard
that name before . . . ?
nil Change I
Meanwhile, The Odd Job's unfortunate
director, Peter Medak, has won himself some-
thing more suitable to his superior talent. He
directs George C. Scott and his wife, Trish Van
Devere, in The Changeling, yet another Gothic
ghost number. No doubt about it. The Exorcist
and The Omen really started something I Which
means, of course, Italy is still in the act with
Ovidio Assonitis' production of The Visitor
with Mel Ferrer. Glenn Ford, John Huston, Sam
Peckinpah, Shelley Winters, a "new screen
sensation" in Joanne Neil and a new kid star
in Paige Connors. Gut who can believe the
director's name— Jules Paradise?
Compiled by Tony Crawley
37
Following part one of our interview with Douglas Trumbull last issue, in which he talked about his film Silent Running, Starburst
takes a closer look at the film that marked Trumbull’s debut as a director.
T here are flowers in the forest. And
rabbits and frogs and snails and
tinkling music and people with no
legs. It's a lush, colourful world which
connects the ultimate trip of 2001 with the
ultimate space-battle of Star Wars.
Douglas T rumbull is, perhaps, the world's
most famous visual effects supervisor. He
gained his reputation by creating the
‘Corridors of Light’ sequence at the end of
2001. Then he made his first and, so far.
I Review by John Fleming |
only feature as director of Silent Running.
Working with him on that film were Jim
Rugg, a special effects man for 16 years
(3 on Star Trek) and visual effects man
John Dykstra (who had worked with
Trumbull on The .Andromeda Strain).
Dykstra went on to supervise effects on
Star Wars. Trumbull went on to handle
effects for Close Encounters of the Third
Kind. But what made Trumbull create the
little-screened Silent Running?
“I had seen a movie called Freaks by
Tod Browning. One of them was a guy
without any legs. He could stand on one
hand and drink from a cup held in the
other. And, I thought, you could make a
robot that way. You could put a robot
body on a guy like that and nobody would
be able to figure out how it was done.”
The squat, waddling result is a little like
A chse-up of the excellent Valley Forge model, showing the highly detailed surface.
?»H|I 14 »’. rmv—
n
[ < f <
38
R2-D2 in the later Star Wars. But you can
imagine a dwarf inside R2-D2. You can't
imagine anything human inside Silent
Running’s drones.
Research, design and construction for
these robot creatures took six months,
with two legless Vietnam veterans acting
as consultants. Each 20-30 lb. plastic suit
had a remote-controlled manipulator arm
on the front (with manual over-ride). The
arm was designed and made by Trumbull's
father Don, so that the robot drones could
weed the garden, play cards and perform
surgery, as required in the plot. Four young
‘bi-lateral amputees' were then employed
to walk on their hands inside the suits.
“It's a fascinating kind of motion," said
Trumbull at the time, “and a purely human
one.
To humanise the drones even more,
they were given little human traits, like
tapping a foot impatiently and nudging
each other when the film's 'hero' arrives.
The plot is simple. The year is 2001. The
remnants of Earth's forests have been
sent into space, enclosed in huge geodisic
domes carried by a fleet of American
Airlines Space Freighters. Aboard one of
the ships, the USS Valley Forge, the four
crew members have little to do except take
part in motorised buggy-races in the vast
storage area, play pool with an automatic
machine, play cards with each other and
have arguments. One of the quartet is a
conservationist freak: Freeman Lowell
(Bruce Dern). After eight years in space, he
feels sure that the Authorities on Earth are
bound to re-create the parks and forests
system with him as Supervisor.
“It's been too long, Lowell,” says one of
his crewmates: “People have got other
things to do now."
But Lowell is obsessed. 'He has no family;
all he cares about are the forests. On Earth,
everywhere you go, the temperature is
75 F, there is hardly any disease and no
unemployment. Fine, agrees Lowell. Except
that there is no beauty; there are no new
frontiers to conquer. If the forests do not
return from space, no little girl will ever
again be ^ble to see “the simple wonder of
a leaf in her hand".
Silent Running has been criticised for
being “sci-fi with the soul of an editorial”
(The New Yorker). The main criticism is
that the plot has been tacked on to a sim-
plistic ecological sermon. But Trumbull
claims : “The ecology aspect was secondary.
What I started with was the relationship
between a man and two drones and the
growth of that relationship.”
His original intention was to have the
drones as comic figures. But star Bruce
Dern persuaded him to play their scenes
relatively ‘straight'. This film was Dern's
big chance to become a major star. Trumbull
had been lucky. He had never before
directed a film and never before worked
with actors. But it was the Easy Rider
period when all the major Hollywood
studios were prepared to give a chance to
new, untried talent. MG M's 2001 had
been a success, so Universal gave 29-year-
old Trumbull the opportunity to direct.
And, for the central role, he cast Bruce
Dern.
“I've been 14 years an actor,” said Dern
at the time, “and I've always eaten babies
or played some sick goddam guy in
everything I've done."
Dern saw the character he played as a
sympathetic part. But Freeman Lowell is
not exactly a well-balanced person. In fact.
he is pretty psychotic. The astronauts
receive a message from Earth. A voice
tells them to “abandon and nuclear
destrucf'all the forests and return to Earth
so that the freighters can be returned to
commercial use. Lowell, who has been
praising 'real' food and flowers since the
film began, is not happy. To emphasise the
point and make the audience empathise
with him, Joan Baez's voice bursts onto the
soundtrack singing about “Fields of
children running wild ... in the Sun . . .”
30
Two of the space ships cruise sUenily through the black void of space.
The other crew members are not interested
in the forests: “If anyone had been
interested, something would have been
done a long time ago."
Lowell’s staring eyes become more
paranoid. One of the Valley Forge's three
forest domes is jettisoned and destroyed.
But, when one of the crew members tries
to enter another dome, he is confronted by
Lowell, who is holding a spade. In the
ensuing fight, our conservationist hero is
injured in the leg and kills his crewmate
with the spade, pressing the handle down
into the man's windpipe. Meanwhile, the
other two astronauts are setting the
nuclear bomb in the third forest dome.
Lowell jettisons the drome and detonates
the bomb, killing both men. Now he is
alone in the vast ship, cruising through
space.
The 26 ft. long model used for filming
exteriors took 30 people over 8 months to
build and was so fragile that it could not be
moved without pieces falling off. Surface
details were added using parts from 6S0
or 850 (memories vary) Japanese model
kits for Second World War German tanks.
The over-all look of the ship was based on
an observation and communication tower
built for the 1970 Osaka World Fair in
Japan (but turned on its side, of course).
“Our ship here,” said Trumbull, “is like
the one in 2001 in some ways. Very long
and slender. I did a lot of the supervision
of the models in that movie and got
involved in some of the basic design.”
Silent Running includes one sequence that
had been abandoned in 2001 as too complex.
The ‘ultimate trip' in 2001 had been
intended to be a journey through the
rings of Saturn; but this was changed to a
trip through the ‘stargate’ of Jupiter.
In Silent Running. Lowell tells the rest of
the space fleet that he has technical
problems on board the Valley Forge and
premature explosions have killed the other
crew members. The three drones supervise
the disposal of debris supposedly from these
explosions. ‘Silent Running’ is a term in
submarine warfare: a desperation man-
oeuvre in which all engines and machinery
are turned off and debris is jettisoned to
convince the enemy that the ship has been
hit. Lowell then heads his supposedly-
crippled ship towards Saturn’s rings,
knowing the fleet will not follow him
because no one has ever survived a trip
through the rings. The space fleet promises
to send a rescue ship “the long way round”
to find him (if he survives). But this will be
like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The Valley Forge enters the gaseous rings.
This sequence took about a week to film,
with multi-coloured clouds rushing towards
the camera and force-waves buffeting the
entire ship. The clouds were created by a
streak photography process similar to the
slit-scan process that Trumbull had in-
vented and used in the 2001 Corridors of
Light sequence. But the effect is visibly
cheaper and much less spectacular. “I
felt,” said Trumbull, “that the beauty
and majesty of 2001 were super-stylised
and super-smooth. I wanted a more rough-
and-ready, almost documentary, look.”
His whole concept of Silent Running
was to have a documentary feel, even in
the interior of the spaceship: “We wanted
to go counter to what I had done in 2001,
which was a slick, well-organised space-
ship. We wanted to give the raw technical
appearance that you get inside a real naval
ship.” So that is just what he did: he
rented a real US Navy ship.
For the interior shots, he used an old
aircraft carrier, the real USS Valley Forge,
decommissioned from the Navy a year
earlier and waiting to be stripped for the
scrap heap. The main location shooting
was done in the ship’s Combat Information
Centre (CIO, between the hangar and flight
decks, where there were about 30 rooms of
various sizes. Trumbull ripped out the
cei lings to reveal ductsand wires, modernised
the door frames and repainted walls in
warmer colours. He used vacuum-formed
plastic for detailing. The naval ship’s
former Air Combat Intelligence Head-
quarters became the spaceship’s main
control room. And the vast hangar deck
was used for the buggy racing sequences
in the spaceship’s storage area.
Near the start of the film, the three other
crew members were seen racing round
this vast storage area, laughing and enjoy-
Douglas Trumbull (right) directs Bruce Dern (left) during the buggy scene in Silent Running.
40
ing themselves. Now, completely alone.
Lowell, drives around the same area. But
he has no one to race with. And no one
to talk to, except the drones. There were
three of the little robots. But one was
ripped apart as the ship tore through the
rings of Saturn. Lowell now names his two
mechanical companions Huey and Dewey;
and their lost comrade Louie (after
Donald Duck's nephews).
He re-programmes them 50 that they
can operate on his injured leg, play cards
with him, tend the gardens with him and
(apparently) talk silently to each other
through their air vents. He himself wanders
around in his off-white gown looking like
St. Francis of Assisi, watering the (lowers
and trees, looking at Earth through a
telescope and thinking about his dead
comrades: “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to
excuse what I did. But I had to do it.”
On the soundtrack, Joan Baez sings;
“Earth between my toes and a flower I will
wear when he returns . . .” In other words,
nothing much is happening.
And this is the film's weakness. It is
well-meaning; it is technically well-made;
but nothing much happens. There are
three credited scripters one of whom,
Mike Cimino, also co-scripted .Magnum
Force and went on to direct Thunderbolt
and Lightfoot and The l>ecr Hunter. But,
says Trumbull, “The screen writers didn’t
get what I wanted. Much of what they
produced was too violent, vicious and
unfeeling. I ended up re-writing two-thirds
of the script myself.” Talking about why
he made the film, he explained:
“It isn’t that I’m interested in science-
fiction, rather I’m interested in technology
and the technical ways of making film. In
high school, I was interested in architecture
and art, and used to read some science-
fiction — Heinlein and Bradbury and so on
—but never really very much of it.” fn fact,
he admits; “I never had any ambition to
be a director. I wanted to be an illustrator.”
That is the problem with Silent Running,
it is brilliantly illustrated but the storyline
and dramatic structure are fatally weak.
Trumbull succeeded in his aim of showing
“machines as a tool that must and can
remain under the control of human beings,
not as a lurking, malevolent force”. But
that is not-a storyline in itself. Live-action
shooting on the film took 37 days; creating
the special effects took 7 months. And this
is a fair reflection of the result on the
screen.
The forest scenes were shot at an aircraft
hangar in Van Nuys, California. Real soil,
shrubs, flowers, trees and animals were
used. The geodisic dome seen in the
background was created by front pro-
jection (a complex process explained simply
in John Brosnan’s book Movie Magic).
This technique had been used successfully
in 2001 but, for Silent Running, Trumbull
designed a smaller, more mobile unit.
Front projection also helped him make the
35 to 40 ft. diameter forest look, in
Trumbull’s words, “enormous” (though
this is a matter of opinion).
What happens to the forests in the film?
One day Lowell and the drones find the
plants and trees dying and defoliated,
affected by some unknown force. Then,
in an accident, Lowell crashes his buggy
into Huey and. even after operating on
him, the drone does not fully recover. To
make matters worse, the fleet rescue ship
finds yailey Forge. It has come to ‘save’
him. Lowell suddenly realises why the
forests are dying and tealises there is only
one way out . . .
Douglas Trumbull succeeded in what he
set out to do: “I was looking for a way to
make a picture of the magnitude of 2001
on a reasonable budget. I knew that by
using what I had earned on 2001 and
some new ideas I had that wouldn’t
require terribly expensive experimentation,
I could do Silent Running for a given price
($1,350,000) and in a given amount of
time.” He succeeded, but people don’t
pay to see directors succeed in their self-
appointed tasks. They pay to be enter-
tained. (Universal were reportedly reluct-
ant to release the film.)
He wanted to make a special effects
film and the story was of secondary
importance: a fatal mistake. The Village
Voice was right when it said Silent Running,
with its superb technical effects and heavy,
meaningful message, “falls somewhere
between Stanley Kubrick and Stanley
Kramer.”
Silent Running (1971)
Bruce Dem {as Freeman Lowell), Cliff Potts
{Wolf), Ron Rifkin {Barker), Jesse Vint
{Keenan), Mark Persons, Steven Brown,
Cheryl Sparks and Larry Whisenhunt
{Drones).
Directed by Doug Trumbull, Screenplay by
Deric Washburn, Mike Cimino and Steven
Bocho. Visual Effects by Doug Trumbull,
John Dykstra and Richard $'uricich.
Produced by Michael Gruskoff.
Time: 89 mins Cert: U
41
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST by Chris
Achilleos
This is another collection of cover
paintings but this time the artist has
made his name with fantasy paperbacks
rather than science fiction although his
work has been featured on the cavers
of the Doctor Who paperbacks.
Most of Chris Achilleos' paintings
involve figures rather than machinery
and when he works on one or two
figures he achieves a dramatic effect.
Apart from his fantasy covers there are
included some paintings of women that
he did for Men Only magazine— they
are fantasy but of a different kind(l)
and hardly the sort of thing that you
would show to your grandmother.
As with the Chris Foss book this is
beautifully packaged in full colour
throughout.
Published by Pepet Tiger. SS peges.
13M
GRfltIPIh KIHGS
newel 0^ future camoge
Mott tkan
V
More fotopketlc tkeji
ORflN'Gt
KILLTEST by Graham King
ft is a fact that large numbers of people
in this modern society of ours get a kick
out of violence (especially when they
are not involved) : you only have to look
at the success of violent films and of
hosing and wrestling to know that at
least a few of the people watching are
wishing it was for real.
Graham King has picked a time, not
very far off, whan the Mafia are cater-
ing to those people by staging gladia-
torial combats. The cost of admission
to the spectators is very high and to the
participants, even higher— it means
death to one or more. Obviously the
governments of the world are unhappy
to let events continue and the book
revolves round attempts by world
leaders to terminate the Mafia's
activities.
Whilst the plot has some interesting
aspects, the main characters are not
particularly well-defined and it is
difficult to identify or sympathise with
any of them.
Published by Arrow Books. 212 peges.
95p.
PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES by
Edward Bryant and Harlan Ellison
In 1973 Harlan Ellison created a series
for television to be called The Starloat
and this is Edward Bryant's novelisation
of Ellison's original concept. The basic
story, though it is the traditional one of
the fate of the passengers on an inter-
stellar cruiser that lost its way
generations before, is very well written.
Accompanying the story is Ellison's
account of the problems he encountered
dealing with the producers. It is a
fascinating tale and serves as a useful
insight into the (American) television
service.
Apart from the addition of Ellison's
Afterword another aspect that makes
this book different from the norm is the
cover which is in a very eye-catching
design using a system called "video-
back". This system utilises multi-
coloured foils and a 3-0 effect to make
sure you don't miss this book as you
pass the display counter. The same
publishers will shortly be issuing
Michael Moorcock's Golden Barge
which will use the same system and
various gold-hued foils to produce a
very attractive picture.
Published by Sevoy Books. 12$ peges.
t1.2S
TIK
SILU€I^SUR|(ft
THE SILVER SURFER by Stan Lee and
Jack Kirby
For many years fans of the Silver Surfer
have been demanding that his own
comic (cancelled in 1970) be revived.
Instead Marvel publisher Stan Lee has
decided to go one better and devote a
complete, full-colour book to a new
Silver Surfer story.
Unfortunately he may have left it too
late : the character featured here is a
parody of its former self. I suspect that
wishing the story to be the best. Stan
Lee tried too hard. Jack Kirby's art-
work is up to his usual professional
standard but even so it does not seem
as good as it was back in 196S when he
and Stan Lea first introduced the
character. Or maybe it is just that we
are all a few years older.
After such a long wait this book
comes as a disappointment: all the
ingredients are there to make this a
classic of illustrated story telling but
the final result is just another comic
book even if the story is one hundred
pages long.
Published by Simon Schuster. 124
peges. t3J5— Import.
FUTURE TENSE: THE CINEMA OF
SCIENCE FICTION hy John Brosnan
Not only does John Brosnan know his
subject but he is able to communicate
his interest in it to his readers.
Future Tense is a history of science
fiction in the cinema from its early
beginnings in 1902 with Melies' A Trip
To The Moon through to 1978 with
Star Wars, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind. Capricorn One et el. It is
more than just a catalogue of film titles
with accompanying plot synopses:
included are many comments and in-
sights from people involved in the filnts.
Further.Mr Brosnan has no qualms about
stating his own opinions. Without a
doubt a lot of care has gone into this
book and it is both interesting and
informative. It is a pity that the price
should put the book beyond the reech
of many fans— perhaps the publishers
could consider a paperback edition?
Published by MeedoneU end Jenes.
320 peges. CO.SS.
VULCAN by Kathleen Sky
The latest in a long line of new Star
Trek stories and there are no prizes for
guessing who the central character is.
As the writers of these new stories
seem to be fascinated by Spock's lack
of emotion. I am fascinated by their
endless search for plot ideas in which
his amotions can show through, though
finally he remains himself. There is no
doubt that those whose work is allowed
to see print can write well but until they
try an entirely different subject I think
few. other than ST fans, will find great
enjoyment from their books.
Published by Bentem Books. 192 peges.
7Sp.
STAR FIRE by Ingo Swann
The author is, apparently, acknow-
ledged to be one of America's super-
psychics. so one may assume that this
novel of psychic war is written with
more than just a passing knowledge of
telepathy, telekenesis and related
phenomena. Whether that is true or not
the author has certainly written a
grippingly different kind of story.
If you have an open mind regarding
42
the possibility of psychic powers then
Star Fire is convincing enough to leave
you wondering if it could happen.
Published bf Sphere Books. 3SS peges.
tus.
SUPERMAN THE MOVIE edited by
Julius Schwartz
The bast way of describing this giant-
size tabloid magazine would be at a
souvenir of the film. In this it more than
serves its purpose; not only are there
many stills from the film, behind-the-
scenes photographs and information on
the stars, but there are alto pre-
production sketches and information on
the designers which are hard to find
elsewhere. It is interuting to note that
among the many photos are at least two
from scenes that did not appear in the
final released version of the film.
To complete the package DC have
reproduced extracts from various
Superman comic book adventures and
these show just how faithful (or not)
the Salkinds have been to the Superman
legend.
If you want a memento of the movie
then, since the cinemas no longer sell
programmes and souvenir booklets, this
(with half the pages in colour) would be
a safe bat.
Published by DC Comics lee. $4 peges.
n.7S-lmport.
21at CENTURY FOSS by Chris Foss
Most buyers of science fiction paper-
backs will know Chris Foss' artwork
even if his name is unfamiliar. He has
made a name for himself with his cover
paintings which invariably feature
superbly detailed spacecraft of ap-
parently gargantuan proportions.
This book is a compilation of some of
the best of his sf work together with
paintings he has done in other areas.
Within 21 at Century Foaa his non-
science fiction work is mainly confined
to 20th Century Warfare and only a few
pages are devoted to this. As is usual
with Dragon's Dream publications the
production and packaging is superb,
resulting in a very nice book.
THE MAKING OF SUPERMAN THE
MOVIE by David Michael Petrou
This book does not do the film justice.
Whilst full of information on the
activities of the various cast and pro-
duction members, it ultimately tells you
very little of how the film was made.
Even so it is an interesting read
although I am still left not knowing how
they made him fly.
Published by Slur Books. 224 peges.
lip.
Reviews by Alex Carpenter
fUTUW TEH^I
^ THE CIXEMA OF ^
SCIENCE FICTION
John Brosnan
Foreword by Harry Harrison who writes
‘It has been a pleasure to read this
volume; the right book published at the
right time . . . John Brosnan has written
the definitive history of the birth and
growth of sf films.’
illustrated throughout with over 100
photographs
320 pages £6.95
available from booksellers or send chequelPO
payable to Macdonald & Jane's for £7.15 {inci p&p)
to The Sales Manager, Macdonald & Jane's,
8 Shepherdess Walk, London N1
MACDONALD & JANE’S
Another winner from Mighty Marvel
On sale this month
43
cPyiaya c^erchandising
The following is a list of some of the fantasy
film magazinesand books available from us.
For our full catalogue send a large self-
addressed envelope. All prices include
postage— overseas customers please note
that orders will be sent by surface mail.
Please make cheques/postal orders pay-
able to MAYA MERCHANDISING and
send to us at 52 Roydene Road, Plum-
stead, London SE18 1QA.
SUBSCRIPTION
SERVICE
Subscriptions are for one year and are
available on the following magazines :
Future (8 issues) £7.60
Starburst (12 issues) £7.20
Starlog (8 issues) £7.60
SPACE 1999
The Making of Space 1999 Now back in
stock this very popular book contains
over 70 stills, including art designs for
make-up and machines. 260 pages
£ 1.00
Space 1999 Poster Mag Nos. 1 & 2 (16
pages with colour throughout)45p each
SUPERMAN
The Making of Superman The Movie
(Petrou) With nearly 30 photographs.
224 pages 90p
Superman The Movie Giant 13^ x lOi'
tabloid with nearly 200 stills and
illustrations. The souvenir book. 64
pages (half in colour) £1 .90
Superman. Last Son Of Krypton
(Maggin) Excellent novel £1.10
HARDCOVER CINEMA
BOOKS
Future Tense (Brosnan) History of
science fiction in the cinema. Over 1 00
stills. 9| X 7^'. 320 pages £7.65
The Ancient World In The Cinema
(Solomon) Nearly 200 photographs.
Includes Hercules, Jason, etc. 1 1 ^ x 8)'.
210 pages £10.20
Sci-Fi Now (Frank) A history of science
fiction films and television in the last
10 years; over 100 stills, nearly half in
colour. 1 1 } X 8i". 80 pages (see also
Softcover Cinema Books) £3.50
An Album of Great Science Fiction
Movies (Manchel) Nearly 100 stills,
1 1 i X 8}" 96 pages £3.50
Horror Movies (Frank) Now back in
print. Over 195 photos, many in colour.
1Ux8r- 216 pages £3.60
Science Fiction Movies (Strick). An
excellent book. Over 170 photos with
many in colour. 1 1 ^ x 8^". 1 60 pages
£3.05
The Vampire Cinema (Pirie) This
beautiful book contains 200 unusual
photos and many rare posters. 1 1 ) x 9".
176 pages ADULTS ONLY £4.80
ARTBOOKS
21 at Century Foss (Foss) Highly
detailed mechanised science fiction. Full
colour throughout 144 pages. 1 1 ^ x 8^'
£5.30
Beauty and the Beast (Achilleos)
Superb fantasy paintings. Full colour
throughout. 11 i x 8^'. 96 pages.
ADULTS ONLY £4.35
Sorcerers A collection of fantasy art by
Conrad, Nino, Kirby, Steranko, etc.
Excellent. 1 1 } x 9'. 80 pages almost all
in colour £5.15
UFOLOGY/
COSMOLOGY
UFO's Operation Trojan Horse (Keel)
7} X 5'. 320 pages £1.75
The Mysterious Unknown (Charroux)
Includes 30 photographs £1 .05
Children Of the Universe (Ditfurth)
Over 30 photographs £1 .45
STAR TREK
Star Trek Fotonovels. Complete Trek
episodes re-told using 300 full colour
stills.
No. 7 : The Galileo 7
No. 8 : A Piece Of The Action
No. 9: The Devil In the Dark
£1.10 each
(Issues 1-6 available at £1 each)
Vulcan I (Sky) A new Spock adventure
90p
The Star Trek Quizbook (Andrews with
Dunning) 1001 questions on the Star-
ship Enterprise's adventures £1 .00
Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual
(Palestine ed) Fully illustrated, the guide
to the beings that inhabit the world of
Star Trek. 1 1 x 8^' 1 60 pages £4.1 5
Making of Star Trek (Whitfield &
Roddenberry). How Star Trek was
conceived, written, sold and produced.
Over 1 00 stills, 41 6 pges £1 .00
World of Star Trek (Gerrold) The com-
plete story, 282 pages plus 64 pagesof
photos £1 .00
Trouble with Tribbles (Gerrold). The
complete story of this episode from first
draft to final shooting ; includes 32 page
of stills 85p
Mudd's Angels (Lawrence). Adaptation
of "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd" 85p
Star Trek Concordance (Trimble).
Packed with details of all Star Trek
episodes. 11 x 81" 256 pages £4.05
New Voyages 2 (Marshak & Culbreth)
Further new adventures £1 .00
Planet of Judgement (Haldeman). A
new Star Trek novel 80p
Price of the Phoenix (Marshak &
Culbreth). A new Star Trek novel 90p
SOFTCOVER CINEMA
BOOKS
Tall, Dark and Gruesome (Lee) The
autobiography of Chris Lee. Illustrated.
288 pages £1 .40
Sci-Fi Now (Frank) See under Hardcover
Cinema Books for details £1.50
Making of Kubrick's 2(X)1 (Agel) The
film from conception to completion.
368 pages (96 pages photos) £1 .70
Science Fiction in the Cinema (Baxter)
Classic science fiction films in depth.
Illustrated. 61 x 51". 240 pages £1.95
Alien Creatures (Siegel & Swares) An
illustrated guide to aliens from films,
television, and comics. Over 1 90 photos
including nearly 40 in full colour. 10} x
81". 160 pages £3.50
Fear: A History of Horror In The
Mass Media (Daniels) 272 pages plus
32 pages photos. 7} x 5" £2.75
Focus On The Science Fiction Film
(Johnson) Includes contributions from
Heinlein, Wells, Corman, Harryhausen,
etc. 182 pages plus 8 pages stills.
8 X 51" £2.95
Horrors From Screen To Scream
(Naha) 850 films of horror, fantasy, and
the sup>ernatural. 306 pages. 10} x 81"
£3.60
Pictorial History Of Science Fiction
Films (Rovin) Excellent reference guide
to SF films from 1902 on. Over 350
photos (6 pages in colour) 240 pages
10}x81" £5.50
MAGAZINES &
FANZINES
Starburst
No. 1 : Star Wars, Star Trek
No. 2 : Prisoner, Close Encounters,
Spiderman
No. 3: Close Encounters, Superman
No. 4; Hulk, Lord of the Rings, Star
Trek
60p each
Future
No. 7 : Van Vogt, Star Hawks, Buck
Rogers 9Sp
Starlog
No. 1 8 : Battlestar Galactica, Vampire
Movies, Star Wars sequel 9Sp
PLUS
Neverwhere (Corben) An illustrated
epic adventure of fantasy and magic in
full colour, 1 1 } X 9M 1 2 pages. ADULTS
ONLY £4.90
Facts About A Feature Film (Bilbow)
Introductory guide to the production of a
film based on Hammer's "To The
Devil . . A Daughter". 60 pages. 1 1 1 x
8 }" £ 2.86
Those Fabulous Fantasy Films (Rovin)
The first complete history of the genre
from Nosferatu and Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari to Sinbad And The Eye of The
Tiger. 272 pages. Well illustrated.
111x8}" £10.15
Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 A.O. (Cowley)
A "Terran Trade Authority Handbook".
Fully illustrated, with technical data and
histories. Full colour throughout: 12 x
91". (Hard cover) 96 pages £3.50
Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction
(Holdstock ed.) Profusely illustrated,
full colour throughout. 224 pages;
hardcover: 12 x 8}" £5.80
Robots: Fact, Fiction Prediction
(Reichardt) 11 x 8". 168 pages. 280
illustrations (12 in colour) £3.30
Terror (Haining) A history of horror
illustrations from pulp magazines. 101 x
8}". 176 pages £3.50
Superheroes (Parry ed) 13 short stories
of superheroes. Includes Bloch, Spinrad
and Niven. 7 x 4}" £1 .00
Why not visit our new shop at 54 Bellegrove Road, Welling, Kent, which stocks our full range of fantasy film related material
plus science fiction, horror and fantasy novels and American comics.
MMISmM
A pictorial review of a unique British event.
House of Hammer and Starburst artist extrodinaire, Brian Lewis, signs Handbooks.
Make-up wizard on many Hammer films, Roy
Ashton, signs autographs for admirers of his
work.
Convention attendees rumage through the
magazines on sale at the Convention [look stall.
Note the back issues of Starburst in the
foreground.
Roger Dicken (special effects on
Warlords of Atlantis) chats with organisers
Mike and Rose Conroy.
45
John' Bolton, artist on Father Shandor for
House of Hammer, autographs Convention
Handbooks for fans.
Producer .Milton Subotsky (Land that
Time Forgot, Thongor) surrounded by hordes
of film fans.
Editorial director of Marvel Comics, Dez Skinn, signs autographs for fans.
Michael Armstrong signs autographs after a
highly entertaining talk about his next project,
a comedy entitled The Curse of Tittikamen.
Convention attendees examine the display of
original sf paintings by artist Brian Lewis.
Artist Dave Gibbons after the highly successful
artists panel.
46
SCIENCE FICTION DapH Th(2y Were
BOOKSHOP Qolden Eyed
IN THE WORLD *
NOW HAS THE FINEST 9-|2 ST. ANNE’S COURT,
MAIL-ORDER SERVICE. LONDON WI.V 3.R.G
Dirsctftd by Kinji Fukasaku
Full movie review - see page 20
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